Cleveland.com's Sad AI Fail

Arguably, my wife's favorite store is Big Lots. We pass the store in Elyria, Ohio almost every day.

For a month straight in the Spring, there was a giant banner that read: Store Closing.

Then Elyria Big Lots closed.

About a month later, a giant banner re-appeared that read: Grand Re-Opening.

Now I haven't been back there yet, but there's a bunch of cars there for the only store in the plaza. My wife went there, and confirmed it was a Big Lots. Could my wife be lying to me? I suppose, but it would be a very elaborate ruse for little payout.

What's my point? 2 days ago, cleveland.com had a story about the Grand Re-Opening at their website. The article was about 150 words long and finished with this sentence: "This story was written with the assistance of AI." I don't even think they used the press release, I think they simply asked Google's AI program to write the story.

But my question is: cleveland.com needed the assistance of AI for THAT? So far, my article is 150 words and I wrote it in 20 minutes from my bed.

In cleveland.com's defense, I thought they would have gone belly up by now, so kudos to them. But does editor Chris Quinn, editorial board lackeys, and an average AI program, really a website make?

Apparently it does.

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You argue that I use AI? We've been over this before. I used AI as a reference point in one article and quoted the AI program like any other author. We almost never use AI for writing or concept creation. We can do bad all by ourselves.

We frequently use AI for images in an attempt to not be sued.....

You know what? One AI image for the cover and this article is over:

Let's try sadness and failure: