When the iconic entertainment site The A.V. Club started publishing AI-generated articles earlier this summer at the directive of its owner, G/O Media, the backlash was intense. “The A.V. Club used to be a benchmark for pop culture writing on the net and now it’s a private equity ghost town pumping out AI generated listicles,” wrote film journalist Luke Dunne. “MST3K” writer Tammy Golden called the move “sickening.” Amid the fallout, G/O editorial director Merrill Brown sent out an internal memo instructing staff to ignore the criticism. “Several of us are very familiar with this kind of chatter as it’s part of an inevitable media industry feedback loop that comes with the advance of new technologies like the Internet in the nineties and more recently the widespread use of streaming media technology,” he wrote. “The best way to deal with industry chatter of this kind is to process it, dismiss the trivial and learn from what surfaces that’s thoughtful and of real value.” So let’s take Brown’s advice and “dismiss the trivial” by going straight to the heart of all the hubbub: the AI’s output. To calibrate your expectations, here’s the disclaimer that accompanies articles by the A.V. Club Bot: “This article is based on data from IMDb,” it reads. “Text was compiled by an AI engine that was then reviewed and edited by the editorial staff.” Its author page adds that “these stories were produced with the help of an AI engine.” You’d think that “based on” and “produced…The A.V. Club's AI-Generated Articles Are Copying Directly From IMDb