I caught a local news site using AI to rewrite my friend's blog post word for word

So my friend runs a small gardening blog out of Portland. Last month, she wrote this really detailed post about fixing root rot in tomato plants. A week later, I'm scrolling through my feed and see the exact same article on a local news site, but the writing was just... off. It had that weird, overly formal tone and repeated the same point three different ways. I checked the byline, and it was some name I'd never heard of. I copied a paragraph into one of those free AI checkers, and it came back 98% likely to be AI generated. I sent the link to my friend, and she was furious. She contacted the site with her original publish date and a side by side comparison. They took it down after two days, but never even apologized. Has anyone else had their original work scraped and turned into AI slop like that? What did you do?

3 comments

3 Comments

lily971mo ago

Those AI checkers are pretty unreliable though.

mary_knight801mo ago

Right? My essay got flagged and I definitely wrote it. So much for that.

loganburns12d ago

Wow that's rough. I'd tell your friend to start watermarking every image she uploads and put a copyright notice in her blog footer. @mary_knight80 is right that those checkers aren't perfect but the site clearly stole her work so the proof is in the side by side, not the tool. A DMCA takedown notice would've been smarter than just emailing them though, since it puts actual legal pressure on the site and forces them to respond. If she hasn't already, tell her to register her content with the US Copyright Office for future posts since it makes the process way easier.