As far as synthetic, AI-generated content goes, we might just be at the tip of the iceberg. In new report, NewsGuard, a firm that measures the credibility of online news sources, identified a whopping 49 websites producing content that appeared to be either mostly or entirely AI-generated in the month of April alone. Designed to mimic the structure of real news sites, the scale of content produced by these sites — in addition to the quality and lack of transparency involved — is alarming, and might offer a glimpse into what an internet flooded with low-quality synthetic content might just look like. Plastered with advertisements and riddled with bland, error-laden writing, these websites paint a fairly dismal picture of the world wide web’s future, where misinformation-fueling, AI-generated content further muddies the lines between reality and fiction. The scale of the operations identified by NewsGuard is immense. “The websites, which often fail to disclose ownership or control, produce a high volume of content related to a variety of topics, including politics, health, entertainment, finance, and technology,” reads NewsGuard’s report. “Some publish hundreds of articles a day. Some of the content advances false narratives.” According to the report, the generic titles of these many sites — GetIntoKnowledge.com, HistoryFact.in, and BestBudgetUSA.com, to name a few — and the fact that they’re plastered with advertisements suggests that they’re designed to generate programmatic revenue through ads and affiliate links. But the websites in question are chock full of glaring red flags. Author bylines, for example, are generally…Dozens of News Sites are Using AI Chatbots to Churn Out Questionable Content