NBC Sportz did not respond to requests for comment. Neither nbcsport.co.uk nor bbcsports.co.uk had their email addresses and other contact information publicly so Wired didn’t have any contact details. (All three websites were registered by domain management company Namecheap, similar to sites that mimic CBS news that double-transforms suspicions within synthetic echo networks). )
The bad actor has tried to adopt a successful media outlet for many years by reissuing the work without permission. However, AI tools now allow variations of this scheme to grow at a newly accelerated pace. “This kind of low quality content is really nothing new,” says Saporta. “But it’s much easier to replicate and expand with these current tools.”
The number of AI Slop websites has been increasing significantly each year since the popularity of generated AI tools exploded in 2023. A site filled with AI content.” By January 2025, we had identified at least 1,150 of these sites.
“The volume has risen,” said Shouvik Paul, CEO of AI detection company Copyleaks. “Many of these are foreign operations and very suspicious operations. So how do you catch up?”
To make the issue more confusing for readers, many mainstream media sites have experimented with publishing AI-generated news articles. (Sports Illustrated itself is said to have run AI-generated content, but the parent company says it was provided by a third party.) In other cases, domain name hustlers fall into difficult times, I bought the URL for the media property that revived them. AI content mills may replace previous healthy journalism with robotic Pablum.
Some of these sites already engulf real-world confusion. In October, the SEO Content Mill posted an announcement generated for the AI at the Halloween Parade in Dublin, Ireland. No such events were planned, but a festivities appeared in anticipation of a celebration.
Paul from Copyleaks explained how some of these websites shine in the real outlet brand identity to promote “like phishing” and junk. In some cases, these sites seem to be making real phishing efforts. One of the sites within the identified ring Doubleverify is designed to mimic the Nigeria-based Fox News Outlet. You will become a reader with a series of suspicious pop-up ads for the software.
The pop-ups look fake, but the group’s website appears to be doing a lively business with programmatic ads. This is an ad placed through large automated ads, rather than a direct relationship between a particular website and an advertiser. Many have a wealth of banners managed by popular programmatic ad servers such as Criteo and Sharethrough. (Neither Criteo nor Sharethrough responded to requests for comment.) Doubleverify’s report states that the synthetic echo operators were considered more brand-safe than Hard News, making them particularly stating that they chose Sports as one of their lead content categories. It suggests.
Program ads from many well-known companies including high-tech stubborns such as Asana, Oracle, Ecommerce Bigwig Net-A-Porter, Makeup Giant Sephora, and Resort chain Kalahari Resorts, Wired has made these websites. Monitor the bsite He appeared while he was there. None of these companies responded to requests for comment.
The moment media confidence plunges and many news outlets’ revenues drop, this type of sloping content milling is a double whammy. It pollutes information ecosystems with junk and stolen writing and sucks up program ad revenue from legitimate content producers.
