- Medium says that members of its Partner Program that make use of AI will be removed from the program.
- This goes for writers who publish spam, fraud and other low-quality content.
- Instances where a writer is suspected of using AI will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis.
To protect its platform from becoming a haven for spammers, Medium has drawn a hardline in the sand as regards use of artificial intelligence by writers in its Partner Program.
While users who publish content for free can still publish anything they want (provided it falls within the scope of Medium’s Terms of Service and Rules), writers in the Partner Program won’t be allowed to use AI to generate stories at all.
“As part of these recent efforts to reduce spam and fraud across the site, last month our Trust and Safety team helped identify and review accounts that were correlated with fraudulent activity. After spending several weeks adjusting the queries and individually reviewing accounts, we suspended about 1.7% of active Partner Program writer accounts that had been flagged to be likely participating in some form of fraudulent activity,” writes principal product manager at Medium, Buster Benson.
While some of those accounts contested the ban, that figure was reportedly tiny and so Medium is forging ahead with an updated policy – those in the Partner Program that publish spam, fraud, AI-generated stories, and other low-quality content will be booted.
As detecting AI writing is tricky, Benson says that matters involving AI will be inspected on a case-by-case basis.
The platform isn’t just targeting fraudulent writers, it’s looking to tackle what it calls coordinated inauthentic engagement. This is where spam comments drive engagement and visibility of a post on Medium. These posts are often paywalled and writers earn money from this engagement. Should Medium detect coordinated inauthentic engagement, writers engaging in this behaviour who are part of the Partner Program will be booted from it.
“Our Partner Program is designed to support an ecosystem on Medium that rewards authentic human expression and authentic human interaction—and we invite you to help us do that. We will continue to find ways to address the many different kinds of problems that a successful and growing platform like Medium attracts,” Benson adds.
It’s great to see Medium taking a hardline on AI-generated content to protect both readers and writers. With AI being used to steal advertising revenue from human writers who rely on those funds, it’s good to know Medium still cares enough to help us scribes make a living.
