Some Medium writers and editors have actually applauded the platform’s approach to AI. Eric Pearce, who founded Medium’s largest pop culture publication Fanfare, says he doesn’t have to fend off many AI-generated requests, and that he believes the human curators of Medium’s boost program help highlight the best of human typing on the platform. “I can’t think of a single piece I’ve read on Medium in the last few months that even hinted that it was created by AI,” he says. “Increasingly, Medium feels like a bastion of sanity among an internet desperate to be eaten alive.”
However, other authors and editors believe that they are currently still seeing a lot of AI-generated text on the platform. Content marketing author Markus Musick, who edits several publications, wrote a post lamenting how what he suspected was an AI-generated article went viral. (Reality Defender analyzed the article in question and rated it 99 percent “probably manipulated.”) The story appears to have been widely read, with over 13,500 “clappings.”
In addition to spotting possible AI content as a reader, Musick also believes he encounters it often as an editor. He says he rejects about 80 percent of potential contributors a month because he suspects they are using AI. He doesn’t use AI detectors, which he calls “useless,” instead relying on his own judgment.
While the volume of likely AI-generated content on Medium is remarkable, the moderation challenges the platform faces—how to showcase good work and keep the trash out—is one that has always plagued the larger network. The AI boom has only exacerbated the problem. While click farms have long been a problem, for example, AI has given SEO-obsessed entrepreneurs a way to quickly resurrect zombie media by filling it with AI slop. There’s a whole subgenre of entrepreneurs on YouTube creating get-rich-quick tutorials, encouraging others to create AI slop on platforms like Facebook, Amazon Kindle and, yes, Medium. (Sample headline: “1-Click AI SEO Medium Empire 🤯.”)
“Right now, Medium is in the same place as the internet as a whole. Because AI content is generated so fast it’s everywhere,” says plagiarism consultant Jonathan Bailey. “Spam filters, human moderators, etc. – these are probably the best tools they have.”
Stubblebine’s argument – that it doesn’t necessarily matter if a platform contains a lot of garbage, as long as it successfully enhances good writing and limits the scope of said garbage – is perhaps more pragmatic than any attempt to banish AI scum entirely. His moderation strategy may be the most sensible approach.
It also suggests a future in which the dead internet theory will come true. The theory, once the domain of exclusively online conspiracy thinkers, posits that most of the Internet is devoid of real people and human-created posts, instead clogged with AI-generated scum and bots. As generative AI tools become more common, platforms that abandon their attempts to wipe out bots will incubate an online world where human-created work becomes increasingly difficult to find on AI-infused platforms .
