Alongside their editorials, some of the most popular alternative weeklies in the US now feature search-engine-optimized listicles about porn performers that appear to be generated by AI.
For example, when you open the Village Voice homepage on your phone, you’ll find archived articles by freelancers (longtime columnist Michael Musto still writes occasionally) and well-known former writers, including Pulitzer Prize-winning music critic Greg Tate. There’s also a tab in the drop-down menu called “OnlyFans.” Clicking on it reveals a catalog of list articles ranking different types of porn performers by demographic, from “Turkish” to “Incest” to “Grandma.” These blog posts link to hundreds of different OnlyFans accounts and are presented as editorial articles, without any advertising or sponsorship labels.
Similar content has appeared on the websites of LA Weekly, which is owned by the same parent company as the Village Voice, Street Media, and the St. Louis-based alternative weekly Riverfront Times. While some of these articles may have been written by human freelancers, the writing shows signs of sloppy AI writing.
AI detection startup Reality Defender scanned some of these posts and flagged the articles as “highly likely” to contain AI-generated text. One example scanned, a Riverfront Times article titled “19 Free OnlyFans Features for Asians in 2024,” ends with a sentence that epitomizes the naughty cliché: “Explore, savour and discover your next favourite addiction. We’ll be back with more awesome talent in the future!”
“We’re seeing more and more old media being reborn as new, AI-generated media,” says Ali Shahriyari, co-founder and CTO at Reality Defender. “Unfortunately, this means a lot less informative and newsworthy content and more SEO-driven ‘boring’ content that wastes people’s time and attention. Tracking these types of publications isn’t even part of our day-to-day work, yet we’re seeing more and more of them.”
LA Weekly laid off most of its staff in March 2024 or offered to be bought out, while the Riverfront Times laid off its entire staff in May 2024 after being sold by parent company Big Lou Media to an unnamed buyer.
RC Baker, the only remaining editorial staff at the Village Voice, said that although OnlyFans posts appear on the site as editorial content, he has no involvement with them: “I’m solely responsible for New York City news and cultural coverage. I have nothing to do with OnlyFans. I believe that content is handled by a separate team based in Los Angeles,” Baker told WIRED.
Similarly, former LA Weekly editor-in-chief Darick Rainey said he had no involvement in the OnlyFans listings story during his time there, as did his colleagues on the editorial team: “We were not happy about it at all, and we had no involvement in publishing it,” he said.
Former employees are unsettled to see their archival work mixed with the filth of SEO porn. “It’s heartbreaking in so many ways,” said former Riverfront Times writer Danny Wisentowski. “It’s like watching your beloved home being eaten up by vines and left to decay.”
