Episode #36
In this episode of the Digital PR Podcast, Louise Parker and Steve Baker speak to Journalist Rob Waugh, whose investigations have exposed how AI tools like ChatGPT are being used to create fake personas, fake commentary and fake credibility. Rob reveals how he uncovered these stories, what’s driving the rise in AI fakery and why it’s a growing threat to trust in media. Together, we explore the line between smart SEO and unethical manipulation, the role of PR in keeping journalism honest and what the future holds for expert commentary.
Have a listen or read the full transcript below.
Steve:
If you work in digital PR, you will likely have read one of Rob Waugh’s articles recently. Over the past few months, he’s published a number of stories that have highlighted the unethical practices that some PR and SEO agencies have been employing using AI to give coverage and links. We wanted to get him on the pod to hear about how he came to these stories and what he thinks about the impact of AI in journalism. Welcome, Rob.
Rob:
Hi, pleasure to be here.
Steve:
So Rob, let’s start from the very beginning. Tell us about when you first heard that something strange was going on with AI and fake experts in the news.
Rob:
Well, weirdly the first inkling I had was actually, I was doing some work for a marketing agency in Spain and we got a guest blogger where as soon as I saw the profile, I just thought, is weird. This person isn’t real. That’s an AI face and there’s no social media profile. You know, the other people there were going, no, no, no, it’s fine. We’ll run a blog. And I said, this person isn’t real. It’s really weird. And then that had kind of primed the pump as it were. So in April last year, I sent out a request for somebody to talk about the psychological impact of cybercrime and I needed somebody who was a psychologist to answer it. And I got this psychologist, but the only work experience she listed was working for a sex toy company. And I was writing this for the Telegraph. So obviously I thought if I mentioned the sex toy company, we’re going to have some sort of old Colonel having a heart attack into his cornflakes on Sunday morning. So I thought, okay, better find out where she practises psychology. I’ll mention some other jobs that she does. And then as soon as I started looking, I just thought the alarm bells rang. I just thought this person wasn’t real. The picture didn’t really look like an Oxford educated psychologist. It looked like somebody who was barely out of their teens. And the profile was just really strange and she had no trace online. Then when I started looking, I was like, it’s really weird, her only jobs are dropshipping sex toys and selling CBD vapes. And that’s all she’s done. That’s her profile online. And at that point I realised that she was just a fake person. Then I looked back at the copy and I was like, this is done with ChatGPT. It had all the things and weirdly capitalised subheads inserted into the copy for no reason and stuff like that. I thought, well, and that’s when I sort of, at that point I sort of pitched the story to the Press Gazette and then once I’d seen a couple more I did the trend piece about a year later.
Louise:
Do you think when you wrote that first story, did that come as a surprise to a lot of people? Or is it actually something that you think everyone was like, I knew that was happening and I just needed this article to confirm that it was happening to a lot of other people?
Rob:
I think that by that point, a lot of journalists had experienced being sent copy that had been generated with ChatGPT. Because I think, now, it’s not like I’m blaming PRs for this because I think that what will happen is you’ll ask the client to do something, they’ll use ChatGPT quietly in the background and then send it over. And if it’s an urgent request, that’s obviously going to happen. But I think what people were surprised by was the fact that there are commenters who actually don’t exist. I think that when I first started talking about this on LinkedIn, a lot of people weren’t aware that this was happening at all, and also didn’t really understand why people might do it.
Steve:
Why is it that people are doing it? you think like what’s the real reason behind it as you’ve been exploring it in your articles?
Rob:
Well, the reasons it’s SEO basically. you have got a bunch of sort of pretty, I mean, the funny thing is I’ve talked to some SEO people and a lot of them just talk about it in this really weird way. They don’t even seem to consider the ethics of it. It’s just good SEO practice and the SEO, what they’re hoping to get is, now, in their ideal world, they’re hoping to get backlinks. But even if not, they’re just hoping to get mentions of their company to sort of boost their profile because one of Google’s, mean, Google tries to claim this isn’t a ranking factor for websites, it’s a EAT is experience expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness, which means that sites can gain ranking by having an expert who talks on their behalf about the subjects on the site. I spoke to an SEO person who had made a very controversial speech advocating that, you know, saying that it is possible to boost your SEO ranking by creating fake experts. And she said that a lot of companies are stuck in a pretty difficult position because they want to boost their search rankings. Let’s say you’re a casino company or you’re a sex toy company, it’s pretty hard to get that expert placed into the media. But if you create a fake expert who’s affiliated with your company and then jump on every journalist request that comes out, you can get enough hits that it significantly boosts your search rankings. And as we all know, if you’re talking about appearing in those first Google results, it can make the difference between you making millions and you making nothing.
Louise:
Yeah, it’s why I would like to say that digital PR and the type of PR that we practice is ethical and we don’t do any of these dodgy practices. But the reason that digital PR is such a lucrative industry is because just like you said, it is very valuable to rank highly in Google and digital PR can often lead to that. You can see why it’s lucrative and it’s a good time-saving, easy measure. And like you say, the ethical considerations aren’t thought about, it should just be really kind of simplistic. What in your mind are the ethical implications? So when you were explaining to the SEO, well, like ethically, the reason we don’t do this is X. Like what is the kind of response that you would have to someone who says, well, why does it matter?
Rob:
The internet is sort of being poisoned by AI slop. I think we all see it all around us. For any publication, you want your value, you want it to be that you bring people real stuff, real expertise, real experts. That is something that journalists and PRs should be working together to achieve. It is, you’ve got a great expert, get them into the newspaper or the podcast or whatever it is, and then let them share their expertise. mean, thing is that, know, and beyond just telling the truth, mean, you know, giving made up psychological advice, even if it is made up by ChatGPT is dangerous. If it’s in a publication that’s read by like, you know, 200 million people a month, if you give bad made up psychological advice, it is, you know, it’s, I think it’s a sort of staggeringly unethical thing to do.
Steve:
So what was the reaction when you discovered this and then you wrote about it? What kind of reaction did you get from PR people, journalists, like off the back of the articles that you’ve done on this topic?
Rob:
Well, yeah, I mean, it sparked a lot of discussion. Among PR people, I think probably it was a reaction not entirely dissimilar to how journalists feel when there’s sort of unethical practices exposed, like, let’s say phone hacking 20 years ago or something like that, where a lot of PR people were keen to sort of highlight this practice as something that can go wrong and what can go wrong when SEO people muscle into what is traditionally PR territory? Among journalists, I think there were a lot of reactions, and one of which was a little bit of dismay at what has happened to the newsrooms of today that there isn’t enough fact checking going on. The psychologist who I got the comment from, it was blatantly obvious to me as soon as I started looking at her that there was something really weird going on there. When I started looking at her, I came to understand the reason that she existed and the SEO angle. For journalists, I’m getting on a bit and I’ve seen newsrooms change a lot. Jesus Christ, I suddenly realised it’s approaching 30 years that I’ve been doing this. I’ve seen newsrooms go from places full of hundreds of people to much more stripped down operations where the expectation is for people to crank out story after story. That means that people cut corners, they forget to do the checks and stuff like that. I think among journalists, there’s a lot of dismay around the fact that we’re in a world where there’s just endless quotas of stories that have to be put out. And that means that people fall for this kind of stuff.
Louise:
Did you get any insight about what may have happened to the people who sourced these fake people in their articles? Do you have any insight of what may be the editors or the owners of the newspapers or people who are running the newsrooms? Did you get any sense of what happened after this was shown to be false?
Rob:
Yeah. I mean, there was, well, I mean, as you can probably imagine, this was a little, I mean, I’m a freelancer, so I work for anybody with a check book and obviously I had to go around many of my own employers asking for a comment in response to this, which was a fun round of cut balls to make. Cause I was like, yes. And also please keep employing me.
Steve:
That’s quite strange. Hahaha.
Rob:
I know that at several major news groups, I heard that The Telegraph sent around to feature journalists, they sent around a thing saying, please check your sources, verify. At one major online news organisation, they’ve now got a system in place where every single source has to be verified before they’ll put a story live. You have to have two online verifications and state whether you contacted the person via phone, email. Et cetera, et cetera. And I know that various other places, they unpublished a lot of this stuff and have put in rules in place to try and make it less likely. There’s been several stories that we’ve covered in the press because they’re fakery of various kinds. I mean, generally speaking, it’s not involved reputable PR agencies in the UK at all. It’s often, I described some of them as more like a cyber attack. It’s East European black hat SEO guys who have figured out that British newsrooms, you know, they’ve got vulnerabilities and that you can get links for pretty, you know, bottom feeding clients as in, you know, online gambling and, you know, CBD products and stuff like that. You know, clients that would struggle to get coverage in any mainstream publication. And that’s when the dodgy tactics come out and you know, in a lot of these ones, we’ve been able to trace the attacks back to people in Lithuania, Romania. In each case, there was a case with some fake lottery winners, which basically linked back to a nest of companies in Romania. In one of them, it seemed like they had a template which could be used to spin up a fake PR agency website in about five minutes.
Louise:
That’s awesome.
Steve:
The internet is wild these days. I mean, it’s like, as you say, it’s like AI slop is poisoning it. That’s such a good way of putting it, but it is really wild what can be achieved. I want to come back to something you said though about the brands involved, some of those sort of like bottom feeding brands. Do you have any evidence or did you come across any evidence that suggests that the brands involved in this were kind of aware of it? Because there’s almost like a twofold thing. It could just be they employed a PR agency or an SEO agency who then did it without the brand knowing or, or do you think there’s a bit of both? Cause that intrigues me. If I was in charge of a brand, I wouldn’t want anything to do with it. Cause it’s just going to be hugely damaging, but yeah, what’s your take?
Rob:
I think that in some cases, the brand is all too aware of it. And in fact, it’s probably a vital part of their business plan because what they’re going to do is they’re going to have a drop shipping outlet. So their costs are pretty minimal. They’re basically just a website that then buys stuff in China and ships it to the people. So their costs are pretty minimal. And a key part of their business plan is going to drum up SEO by creating fake people, et cetera, et cetera. So I’d imagine in those cases, it would have to be part of the plan from the very beginning.
Louise:
I guess perhaps those types of brands aren’t actually interested in how their brand is seen at all. It is just the function of getting links, which helps them rank, which gets them more sales and they don’t care basically. It’s interesting because I don’t know if you’re aware, but so me and Steve have worked in the digital PR industry for about 10 years. That has sprung often from SEO. SEO has a big part in why we do the work we do, but we do it ethically. But a big thing that we would have clients say to us many years ago, but still a little bit now, is talking about buying links. So it used to be quite common and there are still a lot of people who will buy the links, which then help your SEO, which help you rank. Sometimes they’re from websites that are just random websites that have been made up for this purpose. But you often will get people on LinkedIn or spam email sending to you saying we can buy you links at Forbes. We can buy you links at Business Insider. And I think there have been pockets where people have been shown to be doing this variously. It just feels like this is the new version of that. It feels, well, it’s probably cheaper because you’re cutting out a bit of a middleman because you’re just doing the comment and you’re hoping for earned coverage, which money doesn’t exchange hands for that. But it does feel like in the buying links time, there were plenty of brands that knew that that was happening. So it wouldn’t surprise me if there were also some brands out there who maybe knew this was happening. It’s just a new form of black hat link building basically.
Rob:
Yes. I mean, this is, and I think that, you know, often the people who do some of these ones would also do much more legitimate campaigns where, you know, they’ll do a bit of research and, you know, it’ll be, you know, one of those classic viral things, you know, like this is Britain’s favourite thing to have with mashed potatoes or whatever. And, you know, and they’ll do campaigns like that, but then under the table, they might do some more murky campaigns.
Louise:
How interesting, yeah, to kind of hide it, basically. Yeah, mask it.
Steve:
Rob, you talked a little bit about how journalists are kind of tackling this issue of AI fakery. You mentioned the sort of the dual check and what some newsrooms are putting in place. I attended a PR moment event where Harriet Meyer was speaking and she was talking a little bit about this and I thought it was really, really interesting. Is there anything else, because you said, it’s something that we think about quite a lot, how time pressured journalists are, like you’ve got to churn out articles, you’ve mentioned this, but like what else can be done on the journalist side to combat this? Because it’s a tricky issue. Or is there nothing? Is it just sort of accepting that it’s going to happen and we have to weed it out as best as possible?
Rob:
I think that part of the problem is that, you know, in a lot of newsrooms at the minute, it’s the death penalty for hitting 45. You know, you’ve seen a lot of papers just firing everybody who’s, you know, come from the old well-paid kind of model of journalism and just replacing them with, well, copy paste monkeys, as old people always say. And I think that the lack of grey hairs on a lot of news desks is a problem. I think that, you know, it means that people are less skeptical about stories than those of us who’ve been around for a long time, because you just, you build your knowledge of that kind of stuff. I mean, I think there is more awareness that this is a problem and there are bad stories like this creeping in there. I know that for instance, a lot of freelancers are getting a lot more fussy about doing stuff over phone interviews and stuff like that. I think going forward, there’s going to be more of that. I think people are developing a healthy caution around those sort of perfect comments, which arrive instantly by email on any topic because you’re thinking, okay, well, this is just someone’s just typed it into Claude or typed it into ChatGPT and then either as a journalist, I can tell you that my heart sinks when I’m not dealing with a PR. My heart sinks when you’re dealing with the actual founder of the business yourself, that’s the worst because you know, it’ll be a small business and you know, like quite a lot of businesses, it may barely exist really. You know, they’ll just be trying to get more funding or whatever. And the founder will be out there on their own going rogue on, you know, Help a Reporter or whatever services are just trying to get comments planted everywhere. And those are the worst. I think journalists are just developing a bit more cautiousness about that sort of stuff and going, I mean, you know, I’m absolutely ancient. So, you know, I prefer to phone people anyway, but I think, you know, people are switching more to that thing where you actually phone people and, you know, get that sense that the person is real before running the comment.
Steve:
In a way that’s almost going back to how it used to be. It’s sort of full circle. So like the erosion of trust at the moment means that you’re, yeah, you’re kind of having to go back to the, yeah, the checks of phoning someone, actually talking to them. That’s quite interesting to me, how this new technology comes about and then everyone embraces it. People use it for, well, I’m going to use the word you use, nefarious means. It’s the first time we’ve used that word on the podcast. But yeah, like that kind of full circle element is interesting. But a challenge, a challenge for sure. We’re on the PR side, we’re taught about speed. So you’ve mentioned speed. We’re taught about, you know, like getting in there quickly. But there’s that element of like, well, if you’re replying instantly, then obviously it’s been given no thought. Because you know, you need some thought. A PR might draft it for someone, but it needs checking and it shouldn’t be instant. So yeah, journalists will weed that out and know surely, but then they’re time pressured.
Rob:
So journalists, I mean, journalists are aware that, you know, let’s say you’re a cyber security brand, you’re going to have a bunch of pre-written commentary on a variety of topics. And, you know, I know well, in part because I’ve written some of that commentary for brands. You’re aware of, you know, if you need a comment in 10 minutes and it’s about that, you know, that’s what people are going to lean on. But I think that yeah, there is a shift backwards in time and at the risk of seeming even more ancient than I actually am. I used to, I mean, she was a bit of an oddity, but I used to work for an editor who didn’t have a computer on her desk. She said, journalism is a phone job and you should be doing it on the phone. I mean, she did have a secretary to write anything that she wanted, but…
Steve:
Amazing.
Louise:
It’s prompted me to think because, you know, when you’re talking about meeting people or being on the phone, that is something that, as Steve mentioned, we used to do that a lot as PRs. We used to do a lot of desk meets with journalists where we would go and meet the journalist, introduce ourselves, introduce our clients, talk about what we’re working on, get to know them a little bit more. You would think if you did that, it would be quite explosive to then ruin that relationship that you spent some time working on by sending them fake quotes. I feel like that kind of meeting someone in person maybe gives you a bit more reason to behave better and it’s in your interest to behave better. But that’s something we do not do anymore because like Steve said, journalists are time pressured. So we are time pressured and it’s just dropped out. I feel like I still pitch to journalists and I still get coverage from that. I would say that is always on the basis of the story and not because I’m like, well, I know so and so from way back we catch up now and again and have coffee because neither of us have the time. Perhaps going forward, that is something which is going to build that trust and mean that when that journalist is looking for comments, they go to more trusted sources, people that they know that they’ve met.
Rob:
Yeah, I mean, that’s definitely the case. For instance, when I’m working for one employer who’s changed their policy on sources, I go to a PR agency that I have worked with since the nineties. And I know that they cover a particular tech topic and always have experts on it. And I know that they will not be doing any sort of jiggery-pokery. I mean, I think that, you know, desk visits are very much a thing of the past. Editors were pretty impatient with them even 20 years ago, I think. You know, within every newspaper, you’ve always got the sort of management layer who never actually leaves the office and they’re like, Jesus Christ, he’s going to get lunch on my dollar. Even though that is often how you used to get stories, it’s just a question of trust. You know, I mean, like I say, I have doubled down on PR people who I trust, agencies that I know I can trust because, if you cast a response source, it adds this extra bit of work where you’re thinking, okay, is this person real? Are they talking about something they’re actually an expert in? Is this commentary by them or by them typing your questions into ChatGPT?
Steve:
Talking about you, Rob, something I’m really fascinated about with regards to your work and what you receive, you’re a freelance journalist and you’ve written some amazing articles for some amazing publications. I’m imagining you get a lot of pitches from PR people. You’ve obviously found out about this sort of AI expert fakery, but could you shed a little bit of light on what lands in your inbox and what percentage of it, you might not be able to put an exact figure on it but like, can you spot instantly whether it’s AI generated? Because there’s a bit of that going on as well where it’s like, we’re just going to scatter gun approach. And it’s really misguided because you write about this stuff. So they should be reading your articles and know that you’re going to spot it. But I’m fascinated by what you’re receiving really.
Rob:
I mean, I would say, yeah, I mean, you see stuff that just has that kind of hallmarks of ChatGPT. And I mean, that’s the kind of stuff that’s not usually going to land. Stuff that’s going to land—I prefer it if it’s just, you know, even if it’s like 30 words explaining, we’ve got this interviewee, we’ve got this thing that you could look at. We’ve got, you know, X. You know, this story rather than, I mean, I don’t tend to cover research stuff as in, you know, polls of 2000 people about Britain’s favourite paper clip or something like that. But I think there is a differentiation. I mean, you know, a lot of people on every side are using it. I have been briefed and rebriefed by ChatGPT on multiple occasions. Like, I got a rebrief, which is loads of work as well for a piece I wasn’t being paid that much for. And I was looking at the links in the rebriefer I got, they all said ChatGPT in the URL. I was just like, yeah, such a rookie error. And I was a pretty senior journalist on something and I was just like, that is going to take up an hour of my time and you haven’t even done it yourself. So there’s a lot of it on all sides.
Steve:
We should drop that server on Britain’s favourite paper clip as well. Cull that one.
Louise:
When it comes to the future, how do you feel about it from both the journalism side, but also, you know, how you see PRs working with journalists? Do you think it’s going to get worse before it gets better?
Rob:
Yeah, I think it’s going to get worse because it’s a high value thing and the media is a soft target. So you’re going to see unscrupulous people using this sort of tactic a lot. But I also think at the same time, it’s a huge business opportunity because I think that being able to supply real and verified experts is something that’s enormously valuable. I mean, I think that obviously, as we all know, the media’s in an enormous time of change at the minute, a slightly apocalyptic time with the arrival of stuff like AI summaries and Google AI mode, which is threatening the entire online publishing model that we’ve had for 30 years. So I think there’s a huge amount of uncertainty about how the media is going to operate generally speaking going forward. But I think that being able to be the company that really nails the business model of how you provide real authenticated experts on tap very rapidly to meet the demands of today’s news cycle, I think that’s an absolutely enormous business opportunity for somebody, whether they’re a PR agency or a response service or whatever, or something in between. Something we haven’t seen yet.
Louise:
Yeah, because I think while links are still important when it comes to ranking, there is, I feel at least, no harm in getting that as long as you are providing the other side of the deal, which is a genuine expert who is reliable and providing something interesting and useful to a journalist. I think the two can combine. Brands have been getting brand mentions from the beginning of PR.
Rob:
And experts have been being paid by brands since the dawn of time. There’s, I mean, there’s like a couple who’ve been doing it for so long. You’re just like, my God, it’s him. He’s attached to… he’s talking about what now? And, you know, but if you are the kind of expert who can be funny, be interesting and supply relevant commentary on anything relating to like homes or gardens or whatever cooking or whatever it is then that’s a good business model for you and it’s a good business model for the brands who want to pay you basically.
Louise:
How would you suggest building, starting that relationship? Because once you’ve got it solidified, great, you can just fly. But how, if you want to put yourself across as this reliable source of experts in your PR, how do you start that with a journalist?
Rob:
I just think be very clear and honest about what can be delivered and your relationship with the client. I think the thing that really I mean, obviously we all know it’s a complicated thing with sign-off and everything like that, but I think the thing that journalists dislike the most is being told you can get something and then you can’t. So I think that being extremely upfront: I can provide either a person on the phone or written commentary to meet all your questions by X time. Being very upfront and communicating clearly about what you can provide is the easiest way into a journalist’s heart.
Louise:
Nice.
Steve:
I want to sketch out a business plan with you now Rob, but I’m just going to come back to one of your points. I think I agree. There’s a big opportunity if someone can do this kind of properly verified experts, you know, kind of on tap quickly. And I’m probably being quite simple, but it almost doesn’t feel like it should be that difficult. There’s services out there that are kind of being gamed. How would you tackle that? Because I know in one of your more recent articles, I think you talked about a video service. Yeah. So there’s like a video service with deepfake and stuff like that, there’s possibilities to game that. But how would you tackle it?
Rob:
Well, I think that the video thing is, you know, that’s a reasonable starting point. I mean, it’s the company called Source, they’re offering experts who’ve all been verified by video. I mean, this is just me making it up off the top of my head here. But the one that always struck me as having potential is if you get the gold chip on LinkedIn. To get that, you A) have to pay your monthly fee and also you have to verify with a passport. So it scans the passport through the NFC chip on your phone and only I mean, I’d like to say I’ve got the gold chip you, only once you’ve done that can you get the gold chip of the LinkedIn elite. I think that model, I mean, it’s not hard to do. It can be done from home. Any phone’s got an NFC scanner and it can scan the thing in any new passport. And you know, that is instantly something that is a layer of verification that would have ruled out the fake experts who I dealt with because they are not who they say they are, or there is just simply no person who is like that.
Louise:
That seems like a very good piece of technology that already exists, verification that already exists that doesn’t seem to be currently linked up to this aspect.
Rob:
Low cost, easy to use and you can… well, I mean, you must be able to trust it because you know, I can log into my tax account using the same methods.
Steve:
Yeah. Have we just solved the issue? I mean, I say we, it’s more you, Rob. I’m not going to take credit for that. I think we may have just cracked it. It’s done. Wow. Talking about AI Mode, which you referenced. So we obviously keep a close eye on it working in the digital PR industry, the search marketing industry. Recently introduced, there’s a concern amongst publishers and I think rightly it’s going to kill traffic to their sites. What are your thoughts on it as a freelance journalist? It is going to change the current model, right?
Rob:
Yeah, absolutely. I think that this has happened because Google are basically shitting themselves a bit about where they are. Because in America particularly, you’re seeing that a lot of people, you know, they don’t want the 10 blue links anymore. They want to talk to Chatty G and get more detailed answers and get more of an interactive experience. And Google is rushing to move where their competitors are. But, you know, obviously Google… Google, as well as publishers, relies on the traditional model, which is that search engines index your site and then they send you traffic and you monetise that in various different ways like either subscriptions or advertising or whatever. And where we are at the minute is I think that Google is being, well to put it mildly, a little disingenuous about the effects of AI mode because they are making it very hard to see its effects on traffic. I think there’s a lot of evidence emerging that the effect on traffic is apocalyptic. And I think that, you know, something has got to give in this situation. I mean, you know, after several decades, media organisations don’t trust Google. They don’t trust big tech generally, because when you do trust them, you end up sort of building your business model on something that just completely shifts. So I think the situation we are in will lead to an absolute apocalypse unless something changes. But I think probably because Google depends on the revenue, something will change. I mean, I don’t know whether that’s more agreements on revenue sharing. I mean, the one thing I think that we won’t be counting on is for cowardly politicians to actually stand up to big tech and do something about it because history has told us that they just prefer to lick the boot.
Steve:
I love it Rob. These are, I think we’ve got our clip for the intro social, because it is some… you’re clearly and rightly, I think, passionate about this topic. You know, it’s an industry you’ve worked in for a long time and it is changing fast. And I think not for the better in lots of ways. Yeah, apocalyptic is obviously a very strong word, but we keep a close eye on it and I think this year has been the most changeable in all the years I’ve worked in digital PR and it’s actually very difficult to kind of keep up and know what’s going to come next. But then I reassure myself because journalists are all feeling it. Brands are all feeling it. PR people are all feeling it. No one actually has all the answers. The best thing to do is just try and be as transparent, ethical, open, you know, and get good stories out there and do what we’ve kind of always done, I suppose.
Rob:
Yeah.
Louise:
Is there anything that you feel like you can learn from the past or reference from the past? When you spoke about, you know, not putting your trust in big tech as a publisher, I was… Facebook was like a very well-known thing where that was a huge traffic driver until it wasn’t and people had shifted a lot of… you know, the pivot to video and all this kind of stuff. Are there things where this has happened in the past where there can be some learnings or is it just a bit, here comes the next that we have to deal with?
Rob:
I think that pivot to video, I mean, I remember the crazy thing about that was I was working in various online newspapers. I mean, I’m freelance, I’m usually working at a few places at once, but I was working at various… I mean, the insane thing was that Facebook were coming in and giving us lessons in how to rank in their video stuff, while at the same time talking about, I mean, I can’t remember what it was at that point, 97p in the pound in ad revenue. So, you know, I mean, at the time I remember saying to people, and this is insane. It’s like a mugger coming into your office and teaching you how to hand over your wallet. I mean, I think that the lesson that people have drawn from this is that, you know, being near big tech is like being near an unshielded nuclear reactor. It’s just corrosive to everything that is around it. And you have to defend yourself as best you can because, you know, it’s like, the fox and the scorpion. You know, the fox is swimming across the river with the scorpion on its back and it just stings the fox because it’s in a scorpion’s nature to sting. And I think it’s in big tech’s nature to destroy everything around it.
Steve:
Saying all of that, very interested to know, because we use AI and, you know, ChatGPT for various things, how do you use it, if at all?
Rob:
I use it constantly. I mean, I find it absolutely fascinating. I wrote a history of AI a couple of years ago and I’m in hopes to write another one shortly. And I find the technology absolutely fascinating. I use it constantly for research. I think as a freelancer, you have to get to grips with sometimes extremely technical and abstruse topics very, very rapidly. I use it for that. I mean, I use Perplexity and ChatGPT over Google when I’m attempting to get to grips with a topic every single time. I never use it for live copy because I don’t think it’s good enough. I think that the problem is that once you start to lean on it at all for that, you lean on it all the way. I think that that’s a key problem. I literally don’t let it anywhere near live copy. Like I won’t for instance, do a draft with ChatGPT, then write my own version. Because I just think that as soon as you’re leaning on it, all the bits in your brain that come up with those good ideas just switch off. Yeah, I’m an enthusiastic user and fascinated by it. You know, I’m interested to see, because the image editing ones got so much better over the last couple of years, and I’m fascinated to see that same process happen with video and with other forms of delivering information. I think it’s a fascinating technology. Sadly, it’s being delivered by the same murky bunch of massive Silicon Valley companies. Their main raison d’être is to relocate as much of the world’s wealth as possible into the pockets of a tiny number of billionaires.
Steve:
There’s that film that’s just come out. I haven’t seen it yet, but someone was telling me about it. Mountainhead. Have you seen this with Steve Carell? Which is based on these kind of tech bros, like the big tech bros. And I find it fascinating. They genuinely think they’re kind of saving the world. Like they’re doing this really worthy thing. And that fascinates me. It’s like, well, it’s all okay, no matter the murkiness, because we’ll cure cancer. We’ll do, you know, it’ll do this. And it’s like, well, that’s not your goal, is it? That’s the thing. It’s not. The goal is to make money.
Rob:
Yes, absolutely. 100%. And I think, you know, with the Trump administration, you’ve seen they’ve sort of decloaked a bit. And you’ve actually seen them for what they are, which is that they are perfectly willing to destroy society if it makes them more money. And, you know, really, the reason that they’re prepared to do that is they’re prepared to destabilise countries around the world, prepared to destroy entire industries because the only thing they’re afraid of is regulation. And unfortunately, the politicians we have won’t take that step.
Louise:
And on that cheery note, we can wrap up our podcast here, which has been one of my favourites, I really must say, because it is so fascinating to hear about all the work that you’ve been doing, your opinions on everything. Very, very interesting. Should we be expecting any more articles from you around these subjects of shady PR/SEO expert practices?
Rob:
You certainly should. There’s another couple in the pipeline and hopefully the next one’s going to be a banger.
Louise:
Exciting! The next instalment!
Steve:
Great. So Rob, just to completely wrap up, what’s the best way of people following you? Obviously you write for various publications, but your LinkedIn if you post most things on there, I guess?
Rob:
Yeah, I mean, I sort of missed the boat with Twitter and then when LinkedIn started to be a bit more of a thing, I thought I’m going to be a bit more of a LinkedIn guy. So yeah, come and follow me on LinkedIn. It’ll be fun.
Louise:
And am I right in assuming that you might, you know, if people want to be kind of whistleblowers from within their own industry, I’m assuming you’d be interested to hear?
Rob:
Yeah, always interested.
Steve:
So if you want to be a whistleblower or follow Rob’s upcoming articles, do follow Rob on LinkedIn. It’s been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for your time, Rob.
Rob:
Excellent, really enjoyed it.
