‘Artificial’ once denoted something made by humans instead of occurring naturally; for example, artificial flowers. The meaning has changed marginally. Artificial intelligence has all the appeal of those flowers, smirking like evil aliens in their soil-free and water-free vases.
In the early days of the internet websites such as this were assailed by humans posting opportunistic comments hoping to publicise themselves or their websites or their business.
The phenomenon has returned via AI, with dozens of machine-generated comments appearing on recent posts, sixteen at a time, all seeming to advertise concrete works or internet businesses or fish-scaling devices or personal development agencies or home soothsayers.
The comments, while cleverly (somehow) segueing neatly off the content of the post, then lurched drunkenly off into pidgin English territory so typical of those early internet interruptions:
‘Fastidious blogging is your forte!’ ‘My sister is studying this area so I am going to inform her.’ ‘I was recommended this website by means of my cousin.’ ‘This website is actually good!’ ‘Whoa! This blog looks exactly like my old one!’ ‘This article has touched all the internet people.’ ‘This post is in fact a pleasant article, keep it up!’ ‘Every weekend I used to pay a quick visit to this website.’
Hilarious. But not hilarious is eliminating them.
To assist in the avoidance of spam AI-generated spam comments, I have reintroduced ‘comments moderation’, which last appeared on this weblog about fifteen years ago, which must have been another peak-spam era.
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“I made no remark," he (Dr. Sonderborg, drug-dealing doctor to the famous) said. "Remarks want you to make them," I said. "They have their tongues hanging out waiting to be said. This thing here—" I waved the blackjack lightly, "is a persuader. I had to borrow it from a guy.”
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