this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2023
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267
‘World Of Warcraft’ Players Trick AI-Scraping Games Website Into Publishing Nonsense (www.forbes.com)
submitted 1 year ago by trashhalo@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org
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A website called zleague.gg has been scraping Reddit threads, feeding them into an AI and publishing auto-generated summaries without proper oversight. World of Warcraft players on Reddit noticed this and created a fake thread about a made-up feature called Glorbo to trick the AI. The AI then published an article summarizing the fake Glorbo thread, showing that it was easily fooled. This highlights issues with AI-generated content crowding out human writers and the need for Google to better regulate such sites to ensure quality. The Glorbo prank provides an amusing example of how gaming communities can push back against AI overreach.

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[–] SpunkyBarnes@geddit.social 73 points 1 year ago (2 children)

“This highlights issues with A-I generated content crowding out human writers and the need for Google to better regulate such sites to ensure quality.”

Can agree with the first part of that statement, but Google regulating…feels like handing a fox the keys to the hen house.

Regulation of industry should be coming from our legislators, but they’re too busy polarizing their base, abasing themselves to donors and gilding their own cages to care.

Apologies for the rant, but this whole “AI” imbroglio is a textbook case of the cart put before the horse whilst heading downhill.

[–] skip0110@lemm.ee 30 points 1 year ago

Yes, exactly. Google is causing this problem by making a way for this crap to be monetized, and driving the human eyeballs to it. The solution is not to further enable Google as a gatekeeper to information, but to simply replace them.

[–] Terevos@lemm.ee 8 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Regulation should come from the industry not the legislators. Legislators don't know enough about it anyway and will end up just getting the biggest players to write it anyway.

But if the industry does it, certification would be voluntary and it would be transparent who wrote the regulation. Much easier for smaller players to contribute and shape it.

And the best part is that if it sucks, they don't have to participate. And then they can try again

[–] SpunkyBarnes@geddit.social 22 points 1 year ago (2 children)

In a perfect world maybe it would work that way, but I’ve seen too much enshittifaction via vertical integration or ego driven CEObros to have anything but skepticism for industry regulation, self-regulation in particular.

[–] Terevos@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago

And we've seen too much industry manipulation in government too.

But the big companies turning their platforms into absolute crap isn't actually a problem for the industry. Other players will rise up (such as lemmy, kbin, mastodon, and other non activity pub sites) and make good platforms.

[–] storksforlegs@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

Yes, any capitalist system that relies on "self regulation", basically the honour system, is a fantasy at this point.

[–] ijeff@lemdro.id 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Much of the issues seen out of the US are because their approach to legislation is industry-led. You really do not want lobbyists and special interests writing legislation. You also don't want politicians drafting it either. In other countries, you have a strong non-partisan civil service that can carry out consultations and work out the nuts and bolts. Elected politicians should be kept to the making the higher level decisions on what to look at and in what general direction to move in.

[–] exu@feditown.com 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Realistically, the industry here would be Google, Microsoft and Facebook. All of whom I'd definitely trust with this

The legislators themselves should be getting educated instead so they can actually make good decisions.

[–] Terevos@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

But that's not what happens.

Greatest recent example is Elizabeth Warren. She supposedly wasn't going to bow down to the big banks and wrote legislation to "help" the consumer. All she did was end up writing legislation that the big banks highly approved of, killed off many of the smaller banks and made banking way less competitive so that the consumers are suffering.

But if you get a coalition (example ICANN) to regulate stuff, you'll get a better mix of both small and large companies.

[–] conciselyverbose@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

The issue with Google de-emphasizing bad AI in search results is that they aren't impartial. I sort of want them to do it anyways, but I also don't trust them, because they're competing at AI content.

[–] nan@lemmy.blahaj.zone 45 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Reddit user kaefer_kriegerin expresses their excitement, stating, ‘Honestly, this new feature makes me so happy! I just really want some major bot operated news websites to publish an article about this.’

That got a chuckle. Good for them.

[–] Sev@feddit.uk 3 points 1 year ago

Wow that phrasing is almost exactly what a PC gamer article said about one of my random comments when I googled my Reddit username. Sad really.

[–] tourist@community.destinovate.com 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

As if human journalists unfamiliar with their tasked subject have never made this mistake.

[–] AGD4@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Grog XD anyone?

;)

[–] weew@lemmy.ca 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

This feels like the early days of Google, when it was basically a cat and mouse game of their page ranking algorithm vs website creators trying to game their page rank. Still happens, but it's less obvious and easy.

[–] StarServal@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

Yeah, now they just buy the top spot on your search results.

[–] thingsiplay@kbin.social 9 points 1 year ago

@trashhalo Soon an AI program will be generated to oversight AI generated articles from Reddit. omg...what a future.

[–] argentcorvid@midwest.social 9 points 1 year ago

Finally, I love Glorbo!

Glorious for president in 2025!

[–] exohuman@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago

The best part of this is that the AI could not come up with original content. All it can do is repeat what humans already output. I would say games journalism is safe from an AI takeover. Now we just need to get rid of the bot spam.

[–] trashhalo@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago

Looks like another discussion about the same topic happened here. https://beehaw.org/post/6743963

[–] Pratai@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

That shit needs to just be shut down and forgotten about. Nothing good will come from it.

[–] Impulsivedoorholder@reddthat.com 5 points 1 year ago

Zleague also does like tournament betting for gaming.

I thought it sounded familiar.

[–] bobthened@feddit.uk 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Non paywall version?

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