After nearly a decade offline, The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) suddenly sprang back to life this month — and with it began publishing AI-generated slop under the names of its original human bloggers, some of whom hadn’t written for the site since the year 2009.
Owned by AOL when it was shut down in 2015, the beloved blog, as 404 Media and others report, was later purchased by a Hong Kong-based ad agency called Web Orange Limited. TUAW‘s current “About” page claims the company purchased the site “without its original content” from Yahoo IP Holdings LLC this year.
On that same page, Web Orange Limited claims that TUAW’s “mission has been rejuvenated to continue providing Apple enthusiasts and tech professionals with authoritative and engaging content.” By “rejuvenated,” it apparently means “using generative AI to rewrite old articles,” which have subsequently been published under the names of the original site’s actual writers without their permission.
One such writer is Christina Warren, who after cutting her teeth at TUAW went on to write for other publications before joining big-name tech companies.
This month, she appeared to begin posting on the blog again — though as the real Warren tells the fine folks at 404, whoever is publishing those crappy articles under her name is definitely not her.
After leaving TUAW in 2009 and going on, per her LinkedIn, to write at Mashable and Gizmodo, Warren worked first for Microsoft and then GitHub, where she currently remains employed. When the blog was shut down in 2015, she and her colleagues lost all their work — and when it sprang back to life this month, their author pages were replaced with BS bios and AI-generated photos of people who were very much not them.
“What’s worse than not having a good archive of my work is having one that is bastardized with my name but not my face and not my words on it,” Warren told 404.
As of press time, Warren’s name no longer appears on TUAW’s authors’ page, but the generic and almost certainly AI-generated image of a blonde white woman that had previously served as her avatar on the zombie site remains under the name “Mary Brown.” The author’s name had, as 404 notes, originally been changed just to “Christina” soon after the website reached out to Web Orange Limited, Yahoo, and Apollo Global Management, which purchased Yahoo from Verizon in the kind of corporate acquisition Russian doll that’s the stuff of journalism nightmares.
“So someone bought the TUAW domain, populated it with AI-generated slop, and then reused my name from a job I had when I was 21 years old to try to pull some SEO scam that won’t even work in 2024 because Google changed its algo,” Warren said in a post on X-formerly-Twitter. “Assholes!”
It’s hard to disagree with that sentiment, especially given that the new TUAW owners, whoever they are, have done the same thing to other former bloggers as well.
Mike Schramm, one of those writers, wasn’t aware that his name was being erroneously used in such a manner until 404 brought it to his attention.
“I have definitely not written those articles,” Schramm told the site, “and that is definitely not my picture.”
Like Warren, Schramm’s name also no longer appears on the site, which suggests that someone human is taking them down in response to media questions and complaints — though notably, Web Orange does not appear to have responded to requests for comment from either 404 or The Verge. We also reached out to the company but haven’t heard back either.
All told, this is a particularly disgusting example of the way AI is being used to further fill up the internet with junk and screwing over actual creatives in the process.
“Genuinely, fuck AOL/Yahoo/Apollo Global or whoever for doing this,” Warren tweeted — and we can’t say we disagree.
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