Some Medium writers and editors are applauding the platform's approach to AI. Eric Pierce, founder of Medium's largest pop culture publication Fanfare, says he doesn't have to fend off many AI-generated submissions and that he believes the human curators of Medium's boost program help highlight the best of the platform's human writing. “I can't think of a single piece I've read on Medium in the last few months that even suggested it was created by AI,” he says. “Medium increasingly feels like a bastion of sanity in the midst of an internet desperate to eat itself alive.”
However, other writers and editors believe that they are still seeing an abundance of AI-generated writing on the platform at the moment. Content marketing writer Marcus Musick, who edits several publications, wrote a post lamenting how what he suspects is an AI-generated article went viral. (Reality Defender conducted an analysis of the article in question and estimated that it was 99 percent “probably doctored.”) The story appears to be widely read, with more than 13,500 “hits.”
In addition to identifying possible AI content as a reader, Musick also believes he encounters it frequently as an editor. He says he turns away about 80 percent of potential contributors every month because he suspects they are using AI. He does not use AI detectors, which he calls “useless”, but relies on his own judgment.
While the amount of likely AI-generated content on Medium is notable, the moderation challenge the platform faces (how to surface good work and keep junk banned) is one that has always plagued the greater web. The AI boom has simply supercharged the problem. While click farms have long been a problem, AI has given SEO-obsessed entrepreneurs a way to quickly resurrect zombie media channels by filling them with AI slop. There's an entire subgenre of YouTube hustle culture entrepreneurs creating get-rich-quick tutorials and encouraging others to create AI slop on platforms like Facebook, Amazon Kindle, and, yes, Medium. (Sample headline: “1-Click AI SEO Medium Empire 🤯.”)
“Medium is currently in the same place as the internet as a whole. Because AI content is generated so quickly that it is everywhere,” says plagiarism consultant Jonathan Bailey. “Spam filters, the human moderators, etc. – those are probably the best tools they have.”
Stubblebine's argument – that it doesn't necessarily matter whether a platform contains a lot of junk, as long as it successfully amplifies good writing and limits the reach of that junk – is perhaps more pragmatic than any attempt to completely eliminate AI sloppiness. to banish. His moderation strategy is perhaps the smartest approach.
It also suggests a future where the Dead Internet theory comes to fruition. The theory, once the domain of extreme online conspiratorial thinkers, posits that the vast majority of the internet is devoid of real people and human-created posts, but clogged with AI-generated slop and bots. As generative AI tools become more common, platforms that give up on eradicating bots will create an online world where human-made work becomes increasingly difficult to find on platforms overrun by AI.
