Futurism’s January 2023 investigation presented examples of CNET AI-generated articles that closely resembled earlier work by other finance publishers, including near-verbatim passages. Two academics quoted in the report said they would consider comparable uncredited work plagiarism. Those were expert assessments, not a court ruling; CNET’s contemporaneous response focused on editorial and plagiarism-checker failures.
What did Futurism find in CNET’s AI-generated articles?
In an investigation by reporter Jon Christian, updated Jan. 23, 2023, Futurism compared CNET articles with earlier personal-finance writing from Forbes Advisor, The Balance, Investopedia and Bankrate. The published examples showed different kinds of overlap: wording presented as nearly verbatim, sentences changed through small synonym or syntax substitutions, and passages more substantially rephrased.
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Among the examples were CNET’s “How to avoid overdraft and NSF fees” passage alongside an earlier Forbes Advisor passage, and CNET’s language about low-balance alerts alongside an earlier passage from The Balance. Futurism also compared a CNET gift-card headline and opening sentence with a near-identical Forbes example. These side-by-side comparisons document what the investigation reported; they are not an independent audit of every CNET article or proof of how the AI system produced the text.
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The examples led two academics quoted by Futurism to call the uncredited similarities plagiarism under their own assessments. Jeff Schatten, a Washington and Lee University professor who reviewed examples provided by the publication, said that a student submitting similar work without attribution would “almost certainly be expelled” under the hypothetical he was asked to consider.
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Antony Aumann, a philosophy professor at Northern Michigan University, said he would count equivalent uncited work submitted in his class as plagiarism. He explained his view this way: “Plagiarism involves representing something as your own that is in fact not your own.” These comments are the professors’ judgments about the examples, not a universal legal definition or a formal adjudication of CNET’s conduct.
What did CNET say about its AI articles?
January 2023 coverage described changes to CNET’s byline and disclosure practices as the controversy developed. The Washington Post reported Jan. 17 that the initial byline was “CNET Money Staff” and that a byline-page disclosure said the story had been generated using “automation technology.” The Post then described a revised byline and AI disclosure. It also reported accuracy corrections and quoted UC Berkeley professor Hany Farid saying that, if the account was true, “this is primarily an editorial failure.”
In a Jan. 25 account, Plagiarism Today reported that CNET editor-in-chief Connie Guglielmo attributed problems to editorial failures: in some cases, a plagiarism checker was not properly used by an editor, or it missed the issue. The commentary said CNET had audited its AI articles, added corrections to affected stories and paused the program while intending to bring it back. Those reports describe CNET’s response at the time, not its present-day policy.
What remains unknown about the AI system?
The January 2023 reporting did not identify which AI system CNET used or establish what data it had been trained on. Futurism reported that Red Ventures leadership had temporarily paused AI-generated articles at CNET and other properties, and that CNET’s executive vice president of content and audience did not disclose training data at a company meeting. Plagiarism Today likewise said the AI’s identity and training data were not publicly known from the information available to it.
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That leaves important limits on what can be concluded: the examples support scrutiny of specific published text and the editorial process around it, but they do not establish a model’s mechanism or intent. The cited coverage also does not establish whether CNET later resumed or ended AI-generated publishing. Nieman Journalism Lab’s Jan. 24, 2023 item covered the Futurism investigation; it does not resolve those unanswered questions.
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