Illustration by Haein Jeong / The Verge
News publishers have jumped headfirst into artificial intelligence, using generative AI tools to produce bland travel guides, inaccurate film blogs, and SEO-bait explainers. By and large, the goal has been: can we make more pages for ads without paying more writers?
Now, a group of tech outlets is attempting to incorporate generative AI into its websites, though readers won’t find a machine’s byline anytime soon. On August 1st, an AI chatbot tool was added to Macworld, PCWorld, Tech Advisor, and TechHive, promising that readers can “get [their] tech questions answered by AI, based only on stories and reviews by our experts.”
The AI chatbot, dubbed Smart Answers, appears across nearly all articles and on the homepages of the sites, which…