All the news that’s fit to reprint: AI, plagiarism drive revamped Tundra Drums website

A screenshot shows nan beforehand page of The Tundra Drums website (thetundradrums.com) connected July 26, 2024.

For decades, The Tundra Drums newspaper served arsenic a mouthpiece for nan issues that mattered astir to communities successful Western Alaska. Now, a website posing arsenic nan erstwhile Bethel institution is stealing media contented from crossed nan state. But why it’s happening is simply a mystery.

Earlier this summer, KYUK sewage a call. Was nan shuttered Tundra Drums, erstwhile a trusted news root for nan Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, resuming publication?

The caller was referring to thetundradrums.com website, which had been each but defunct for almost a decade. Over nan past 2 months, though, nan website has been prolific successful its sum of Alaska issues. One author, Hadiqah Shahid, has managed to enactment connected apical of breaking news from Anchorage and crossed nan state, each while offering up a rich variety of Bethel stories — utilizing transcript and imagery taken from KYUK stories posted conscionable days earlier, among different sources. Shahid has besides covered stories from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, Ohio’s Bethel Township, and a Bethel College successful Kansas.

A July 18, 2024 Tundra Drums header and photograph (left), alongside a header and photograph from Bethel nationalist power position KYUK posted 3 days earlier. The photo, taken by KYUK communicative writer and news head Sage Smiley, is uncredited connected nan Tundra Drums website. (Screenshot composite)

Kenrick Mock, a machine subject professor and laminitis of nan University of Alaska’s Data Science and AI Lab, said that The Tundra Drums website bears nan hallmarks of artificial intelligence.

“The website very powerfully looks for illustration it was generated by AI. It has a beautiful wide scope of stories, immoderate of nan communal keywords, for illustration Bethel, wherever it’s pulling successful different stories astir different places that person Bethel successful nan name,” Mock said. “Just nan truth that a website of this scope could beryllium group up successful a mini municipality for illustration Bethel is besides a small puzzling.”

Frequent contributor Shahid has nary writer curriculum vitae aliases floor plan photo, and for illustration different names that look atop stories connected The Tundra Drums website, does not look to beryllium a existent person. Nearly each of Shahid’s news stories look to beryllium rewritten versions of sum already online, though aggregate short nationalist information stories, like one about a h2o outage successful Bethel, were apparently written based connected societal media posts alone. Mock said that nan contented successful nan stories themselves besides contains tell-tale signs of AI writing.

“(There are) tons of slug points, (and) not going into benignant of circumstantial specifications aliases quotes. And truthful if we’re doing a summary, for example, of different story, they look benignant of for illustration this,” Mock said.

Online contented farms

There are galore active online contented farms reportedly utilizing AI to rewrite news stories from awesome publications. On nan revamped The Tundra Drums website, articles are presented arsenic original contented and do not nexus backmost to original stories. Multiple stories incorporate photos republished without support aliases attribution, and a statement astatine nan bottommost of nan website sounds “All Copyright Reversed.”

However, nan website is conspicuously free of ads. This surprises Mock.

“So of people I first thought erstwhile I heard astir this was, ‘oh they’ve sewage immoderate advertisement banner up location truthful they tin make immoderate gross by group coming to nan site,’ but location doesn’t look to beryllium immoderate of that,” Mock said. “And obviously, it would costs them money to tally nan site.”

Some of that costs comes pinch hosting nan site, and successful mid-July, immoderate privately registered entity is paying for nan domain renewed their rank for different year.

“They kept that backstage by registering done a proxy. So it’s not clear who has really registered this website,” Mock said.

To nan undiscerning eye, thetundradrums.com is simply a morganatic news tract – sleek, straightforward, and a one-stop shop for local, state, and world news.

If location were immoderate mobility of whether nan website is really claiming to beryllium nan authentic The Tundra Drums, its Facebook page bills it arsenic “Alaska’s trusted news root since 1974,” nan twelvemonth nan erstwhile Bethel newspaper was founded.

The existent proprietor of The Tundra Drums newspaper, Edgar Blatchford, did not respond to aggregate requests for remark regarding nan website.

According to an Internet archival instrumentality called the Wayback Machine, The Tundra Drums website has fallen into varying states of disrepair since 2016 erstwhile it, alongside nan people edition, ceased publishing news.

But connected May 10, nan caller incarnation of nan website published what appears to beryllium its first story, a summary of infrastructure projects successful Bethel by an writer named Rebecca Sean. It features an unattributed photograph of an Anchorage intersection snapped by an Anchorage Daily News photographer.

On July 22, different unattributed ADN photograph accompanied a story about erstwhile Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson. But this time, The Tundra Drums communicative besides appeared connected a monolithic news aggregator called NewsBreak that does big ads.

NewsBreak pays contributors based connected page views, and itself has antecedently been accused of publishing lifted section news contented nether fictitious bylines.

Mock, pinch nan AI lab, said that nan existent endgame of The Tundra Drums website could spell beyond simply being listed connected profit-driven aggregators for illustration NewsBreak.

“The different thought is it could beryllium fundamentally a trial to spot what personification tin do,” Mock said. “So let’s prime a mini place, they’ll mostly spell unnoticed, right? But we tin effort these technologies out, and trial them and spot what happens, and hone nan package for immoderate early intent personification mightiness have.”

As nan “About Us” tab connected nan website explains, “In a world wherever misinformation is rampant, we judge successful nan powerfulness of responsible publicity to empower individuals and style society.”

The mobility of why nan namesake of a long-vanished Bethel newspaper has go progressive successful this ngo remains unanswered.

The Tundra Drums did not respond to a petition for remark done its website, aliases done its domain hosting service.