“I’m not a fan of AI,” Nebojša Vujinović Vujo says. The admission surprises me: He has built a bustling business by snapping up abandoned news outlets and other websites and stuffing them full of algorithmically generated articles. Although he accepts that his model rankles writers and readers alike, he says he’s simply embracing an unstoppable new tool—large language models—in the same way people rationally swapped horse-drawn buggies for gas-powered vehicles. “I hate cars.
“I’m just one guy who, yes, in business I am using AI to create shitty content on the internet to earn money or a fortune,” he says. He’s not a mustache-twirling supervillain, chortling as he spews journalism-killing AI slime. He’s an affable young dad who wants his kid to have a nicer childhood than he did. That doesn’t make the collateral damage of the AI clickbait business any less unsettling.