Being fired was only the first indignity that one freelance writer had to suffer.

Even though Ben Touati was no longer working at ClickOut Media, new articles continued to appear under his name. An AI, it turned out, had taken over his byline, churning out stuff that was far below the standards he held for his real work.

The situation felt like a “slap in the face,” Touati told Press Gazette. The articles started appearing just days after he was fired from ClickOut’s German operation.

“The five articles were just like lazy, obviously slop, obviously there’s not a real person that is behind that,” the Stockholm-based writer fumed.

A statement from ClickOut Media didn’t address why it was effectively impersonating a former employee with AI.

“We use AI-assisted content where appropriate in tandem with human checks and edits,” it said in the statement, per Press Gazette. “We continue to evolve our AI agents to be more accurate and improve our human editorial processes.”

Heaps of online publishers are embracing AI — often deceptively — and Clickout Media is right up there with the worst of them.

Scumfucks. What I hate about these sites having to resort to all sorts of trickery to keep being relevant and having more traffic -- and ad revenue -- coming in. Won't be surprised either some of these sites get paid by other corporations and/or governments to push specific narratives and propaganda.