Although CC is doing as well as it ever has, setting a new record last year with over 12 million pageviews, our current success does feel somewhat fragile. I’m not paranoid, but there are some serious threats out there, and not just to CC. The web is evolving and not in a good way, and it may soon get much worse.
The two image examples above are representative of the two main threats: garbage sites that optimize their headlines so as to appear catchy (“Click bait”) on Google Discover and drown out legitimate sites like CC and Google’s new AI Mode, which threatens to destroy the vital search links that millions of web sites depend on for traffic.
CC’s viewership comes from three primary sources:
- Direct: folks who come directly to the site, perhaps daily, or every few days or so. Direct traffic is of course the best, inasmuch as it does not depend on the other two. The reality though is that direct traffic has been tapering off for years, since about 2015, as a result of social media, the fragmentation of the web, and the use of phones as the primary viewing device.
- Search: viewers that click on a search result (most of Google) that offers CC in the search results. Due to the high ranking of CC in general and our reputable content, we generally do well with Google searches, and it used to comprise almost half of our traffic.
- Google Discover (and similar apps): Discover is the continuous feed of posts that Google curates for every individual user based on their interests. Discover has been a huge boon for us, as it can multiply the views any given post normally gets from 2x to over 50x. Our Vintage Snapshots as well as many of our other posts are regularly picked up by Discover and the resulting increase in revenue has allowed us to hire both Rich and Aaron.
Let’s deal with the Google Discover issue first, as that’s the image I placed at the top. This website (Tork) and a number of others like it spew out an endless stream of posts that are all-too often misleading, incomplete or just factually incorrect like this one. The title (“The American Compact Car That Outsold The Mustang”) is utterly false, and the text completely mixes up all Ramblers and the Rambler American, repeatedly. In that third paragraph, the author states that “AMC sold nearly 420,000 Ramblers that year” (1960); true, but that’s all Ramblers; the Rambler American sold just some 100,000 units. And that 420k for all Ramblers is still well below the Mustang’s 680k in 1965 and 608k in 1966 and 472k in 1967.
But, wait…further down he clearly points out that the Mustang sold in numbers well in excess of the Ramblers. So much for that headline. But no, The Rambler American was very much not “the compact car king in the US”.
It appears that all or most of these sites are based outside of the US, created simply to suck as much revenue from Discover as possible, as undoubtedly no one would go directly to these sites and they do not do well in Google searches, since Google has increasingly become much more demanding about what sites they refer in a search. Google has changed their standards several times in the past two years, causing havoc to untold numbers of sites that totally or largely depend on searches. These “HUC” (Helpful, Useful Content) standards are intended to improve results for sites that have genuinely helpful and useful content and not just SEO (Search Engine Optimized) content is is all-too often mediocre at best. This is a good thing, and has benefited CC. Yet Discover does not seem to have the same or any HUC standards that it applies to searches.
But that may all be water under the bridge, as Google has unveiled Google AI Mode, which uses AI to answer all queries instead of actually showing websites that offer it. For instance, if you search “1966 VW 1300 Beetle”, CC’s post on that subject is at the top of the page, as it has been for quite a few years. And that is the case for a large number of our posts.
But in AI Mode, a whole article about the subject is generated (only partially shown here). They do show some websites as either their source material or additional sources. But look at the top one on the right there: It’s that utterly garbage AI-based website we featured here a while back because their purple AI-generated images were often so off and bizarre. This is really bad, not only because it (almost) completely cuts out traffic to sites from searches (who’s going to bother clicking on those sites on the right when Google AI gives a complete article?) but the top link they offer up there is 100% AI-generated and not trustworthy.
BTW, Google AI does put this disclaimer on the bottom of each result, but that’s not exactly helpful. There’s no feedback mechanism or other way to tell them that it’s wrong. And if they’re using AI-generated sites as an actual source, well then mistakes are inevitable. FWIW, I did not find any mistakes in this Google AI article on the ’66 VW, and undoubtedly AI is getting better all the time. Who needs websites? Yet it was Google that created this whole ecosystem in the first place and made them so huge.
All of this is rather disheartening. We’re drowning in a world of misinformation, fake news, deliberate deception, polarization, silos of news and information, and the consolidation of the tech giants over increasing amounts of what folks are offered and consume. One might think our little corner of automotive history might somehow escape that. Well, we’re determined to do so as long as possible. AI responses will never equal the personal insights, experience, pathos, judgment, humor, irony, and other human qualities that are present in genuine human-created content such as it is on CC. That’s why from the get-go CC was always more than just about regurgitating commonly-available facts.
With your support we will carry on for as long as possible. But there’s a cold and chilly headwind blowing.
Just another example of the AI hype. My son has a masters degree in computer science with specialization in data science. He says AI is a sophisticated bullsh*t artist. He demonstrated to me how he could get Chatgpt twisted around to where it admitted it was wrong.
Caveat emptor.
Thank you for this information. I have been using AI for quite a while.And was happy with the consolidated results.But now I can see how it can be very erroneous. I especially use AI for automotive type.Searches thinking that that’s an area that is quantitative and unlikely to be incorrect. I was wrong and will be more careful and will attempt to go direct to websites like yours in the future.
MANY years ago, as a HS teacher, the fascination of even preteens with video gaming exceeded their interest in classroom learning. At that time, I became leary of the future influence of what is now AI. I couldn’t believe that students were allowed to use personal computers for math classes. Asking the head of the Math department about it, he replied that students no longer needed to waste time LEARNING information, just knowing how to find it. Was this the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning? I certainly don’t know!
I actually follow CC mostly through it’s RSS feed on Feedly (which shows about 580 followers of the feed at the moment)
I don’t remember how I found it originally, but, have enjoyed reading your articles for a number of years.
The other automotive site in my Feedly feed is Autopian.
I really enjoy reading articles by obviously real people. The articles here and there feel like information from a friend who happens to know A LOT about cars.
I’ve recently realized I’m not as much of a car expert as I once thought I was. I have a general knowledge of wheeled thingys going back to my childhood in the ’60s, through my years of wrenching on my own $200 cars because that’s all I could afford.
The articles and comments here show me there were a lot of details I missed.
The historical angle of many of CC’s articles is very interesting to me, especially when I see an article about one of my old cars, or cars my Dad or Uncles had. The information is presented from a perspective that will be difficult for AI to duplicate – the old “Been There. Done That” which helps to solidify a reputation for expertise that people desire.
AI might get to a point where it can provide factual articles and stats about cars, but it will never provide the rich commentary and stories of the cars we have owned individually. My real interest in this site has always been the COALs, of which I’ve contributed a few. Those very human stories of cars we’ve owned or known are never going to be the domain of AI. I know CC’s original mission statement was to document the forgotten, ordinary cars of yesteryear, but I think that it evolved into doing much more than that, into telling the story of some of those cars and how they affected individual people.
Garbage in, garbage out. This old data processing adage still applies today.
Link:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/what-if/what-if-1975-studebaker-lark/
I think sensible people who are able to use their brains and are interested in automotive texts will have CC as one of the most important bookmarks at the top of their browsers.
From the noughties onwards, there was a joke in my circles: “Try >Gockel<*, but remember, it's a SEARCH-engine, not a FIND-engine."
Now this company (like many others) have built an LLM function into their system, which has been fed with everything they could get their hands on – disregarding all copyright laws.
The result: we can now watch humanity go stupid live.
Because there is nothing intelligent about it. This are trained neural networks – and are only referred to as ‘artificial intelligence’ (AI) by marketing people, journalists, politicians and other digital illiterates.
Whether it could be an enrichment to have people who use AI out of ignorance on CC I cannot judge.
But based on my observations in my personal environment so far, I would say: no, probably not.
* This is pronounced similarly to "Google" in German, but means rooster.
I’ve noticed increasing trouble getting to legitimate sites and/or articles for gardening, too. Many of the articles that come up early in search results are clearly AI-generated waffle, that may or may not be approximately correct. For now, I can get through to legitimate websites with a little persistence, but as Paul says, how many people will bother to check out links of any kind if all the “facts” are neatly summarized for them at the top of the page?
As AI continually trains on itself, more and more errors will be perpetuated and magnified. There are even predictions that in a few years it will be impossible to tell what is real or unreal. Younger people who grow up going to AI for answers to everything will not even have developed critical reasoning skills, much less research skills. It’s all quite depressing.
AI isn’t inherently the problem here, it’s how Google positions it as the lead result. Similar would occur if they positioned Wikipedia as the default lead result. It gives people a “top” result which many will read and not go any further. If Google’s AI was repackaged as “Googlepedia” it’d be even less transparent.
Wiki, as we well know, is far from perfect with plenty of outright falsehoods in it. Yet it serves to give information that suffices and is “correct enough” what, 98% of the time? And if one is interested in a deeper dive (or to verify it all or for something more obscure) then one seeks out specialty sites and sources, sometimes a number of them.
Google’s AI results annoy me to no end as it is so often wrong about everything, usually blatantly so but that assumes I know enough about the subject already to realize that. I understand that and generally ignore it and scroll down, but obviously there are plenty of people that just eat it all up as with many other things out there to everyone’s detriment, AI itself isn’t causing human idiocy but it is furthering it. One by one people may realize it is not perfect and question it more and more. But if the creators won’t police it (or have a way for users to police and factcheck it), then the whole system/society is on its way down as we’ve been seeing happening even before AI with blatant falsehoods being propagated on purpose and not effectively stopped (politics and “news”). At the end of the day Google did create their ecosystem, it’s their playground, we just use the swingset. Until they want to hog it all the time.
CC is lucky in that we got here before AI, so we created much of the body of work (or A body of work anyway), and that is there as a reference for those sentient enough to realize it is needed, however AI will get better and better, creating less of a need or desire for it. But perhaps it won’t get better, AI can just as easily use sites such as the junk sites for reference, which may just as easily be AI generated themselves (from a different engine) and then keep consuming its own junk. As you stated, much of the appeal of the site is in things other than just raw facts, the challenge is in how to get that in front of people so they realize this site as a resource. The “feed” is algorithm (which IS AI) based, obviously, and it’s providing stuff we offer to people that aren’t overtly asking for it, it’s not a big step before it generates and organizes that content itself as well. Then, as far as this website and others are concerned, we become the magazine industry of the last 30 years.
Another car website did a test where they asked an AI engine to write a post in the voice of several of their authors, they (those authors) then picked the results apart as far as things and phrases they would never use, but you know what? On the face of it, I didn’t immediately suss out that it wasn’t their writing and i doubt many others did either. I’m a little afraid to check if C3PO and his buddies could write some of the things I write late at night while giggling to myself but I’m sure they could get uncomfortably close…
The challenge is in how to repackage it as a force for good instead of evil (and mis/disinformation IS evil, rotting society from the core). However I don’t see the collective will out there to do that, so I unfortunately do not have the answer.
The technology could be used to immensely help humanity.
It is not the technology.
Of course. You can say the same about the internet itself. History repeats endlessly.
Or the atomic bomb.. remember “Atoms for Peace”? AI will make “The Bomb” look like child’s play. Believe Stephen Hawking.
CC has been among my favorite website for probably a decade, and I’m proud to be one of the ones that comes here directly every few days. As magazines, websites and other such journalistic reading materials fall by the wayside and AI’s crap comes to the surface, CC’s quality becomes that much more important. Keep up the good work, and I’ll be a loyal reader for many years to come!
I have a blog at https://blog.jimgrey.net. My Google search traffic is down about 11 percent this year, probably thanks to AI results.
A lot of people don’t want a blog article when they search, they just want information. “What battery does this Canon AE-1 take” has brought a lot of people to my article about that camera. But then they have to scan the whole thing for the one line that gives that answer.
Why wouldn’t they want the AI summary to just tell them?
Through a paid newsletter related to my profession, I got a year’s free trial to a paid tier of the Perplexity AI engine. Its killer feature is that you ask it a question, and it searches the Web for answers — and annotates its answer with clickable links to the source documents it found. Frankly, I love it. I started a small business recently and just wanted to know if I had to register it with the Indiana Department of Revenue. The INDOR site was absolutely no help. Perplexity cut though the crap and gave me the answer: no, not in my case. And then i clicked the annotation links to confirm. Briliant!
A key thing these changes harm for sites like CC and mine is discoverability. I have no way of measuring “conversions” but some real percentage of my readers found me through “Canon AE-1 battery” type searches.
But at least for my site I claim that the primary reason people find AND follw me is shares, not search. But even that is waning. Facebook used to be second only to Google for delivering views. That started falling off precipitously last year. Even my own shares on FB barely translate to views now, compared to just a year ago.
So yes, the uncertainty of what’s next for sites of original content, especially historical/informational content, has gone way up.
In a comment above I also stated that the results from Google AI searches can undoubtedly be a better alternative to sifting through the sources, some of which may be weak (or worse). I get the appeal and see the inevitability of it. And it’s inevitably going to reduce search results links to sites. But showing an AI generated site as a link on the right, one whose images are often hallucinated is a bit disappointing.
The thing that bugs me is when AI gets info about some obscure camera from my site. I don’t monetize my site, but I do get “rewarded” when people read and comment. I’m not excited about AI scraping my content and limiting the “reward” I receive from my work. Can I get paid by the AI companies instead?
Clearly, then, AI doesn’t come close to passing the Turing Test where I can’t tell a human from AI.
I stumbled upon CC on my own. I don’t really have, nor know of another place to go to satisfy my lifelong curiosity and interest in cars. I don’t see that changing.
BTW, if my memory is correct, the Mustang took the crown away from the Falcon for having the highest first year sales volume for a new nameplate. Not bad for a car that started out as only a hardtop and a convertible.
YouTube is worse. It is now full of BS car videos with AI written and spoken narration. Typically wrong on all kinds of facts related to whatever the topic is along with photos and videos of often the wrong car or customized not production versions etc. Often the topic is even BS clickbait, like maybe “Worst American Cars of the 1950s” that might include just about anything.
Usually the comments are all about how wrong and stupid the video was and pointing out that it is probably AI BS. After seeing a few of these you might wise up, but there are always more marks including those without the knowledge to detect the BS. I get these suggested on YT, but there are probably lots of clickbait AI BS videos on all kinds of other topics.
Agreed entirely, and then, through the fog of all that nonsense and distraction, try finding that excellent, possibly one-off video you actually wanted. Often enough now, you can’t.
The best car videos are some guy actually driving the car, saying random comments along with the engine and traffic and shifting. Those would be hard for AI.
I also like to watch the old dealer training filmstrips. One of the channels started using AI in an odd way. The clip when viewed online is clearly original, with the wording and voice style typical of the company, with blips to change the slide every few seconds. When I downloaded it, the sound was dubbed by a GERMAN translation of the text, still mixed with the same blips! AI is getting extremely good at mimicry.
YouTube really has gotten crazy with AI generated crap. I keep getting feeds for “classic car” channels filled with mistakes. Just now partially watched a video on the 55 Imperial with a disembodied voice describing the pushbutton transmission controls and AstraDome enclosed gauges while showing pictures of a 55 Imperial dash with normal gauges and a wand transmission control (56 was the first year for pushbutton controls on Imperial and the full AstraDome design debuted in 1960 on the Chrysler models but not the Imperial). Sorry to hear they are decreasing hits for the many excellent channels and sites.
I had a comment just about finished and I got an aw snap notice. Reloaded the webpage. Comment was lost. It also keeps timing out of continuous typing isn’t being performed. Still doing it. Wow. I have this site bookmarked and I hope it successfully adds me to a notification list. The articles look interesting, but this comment tool is discouraging to use.
As has been pointed out, the danger of the AI ‘abstraction layer’ suppressing the underlying data sources (e.g. websites) is very real.
The struggle gets even worse when AI trained models use what is considered proprietary information without the knowledge or consent of the source.
Since 2023, the NY Times has been battling in court with OpenAI on this issue. AI “answers” came directly from their articles, bypassing their subscription paywall.
As for CC, the site is “open” for AI aggregation, and it seems to me to protect the inherent value, the industry needs controls in place to reliably represent the underlying website sources.
I am not a big consumer. Financial constraints of long and complex origin sees to that.
What I am detecting is that the algorithms of searching are increasingly useless to me. I get the same results each time, even with quite careful targeting. The same is definitely occurring on Youtube: I only get the same things time and again, most of which are junk sites I’ve bumped into once. (No, I’m not interested in the world’s fastest Corvair, or somesuch). I worry that some of the small and eccentric makers – you know, the ones who enthusiastically show a drive of a, say, Morris 1100 – will simply fail through not being found. The same could easily snuff out bigger operations like CC. (Old farts, old cars, they don’t buy new, downgrade it, links and all).
The incredibly evil, depressing nature of information control and abuse may well have an even more sinister business aim – to absolutely exclude the poor. Funny how the beneficiaries of Big Tech are the already obscenely rich, huh. Pretty hard for the voiceless to rise up and subvert the old dominant paradigm when they’re cut off and silenced.
Agreed, totally.
What I find especially annoying with Youtube is the way it commonly disregards the channels I subscribe to and keeps offering up/suggesting junk I don’t want. Same with facebook – ignores stuff I care about and keeps suggesting stuff I have zero interest in. Digging deeper, that’s because that cursed algorithm says a man of my age is interested in X and Y, when I have zero interest in such stuff. I am an individual (okay, a unique, I’ll pay that!), not a predictable consumer of stuff.
Some days I just plain can’t be bothered fighting the misinformation Google and YT shove at me, and go do something else. A tech-free day can be amazingly liberating.
Any time I inadvertently click on an AI/ web-of-lies site, I report it as untrustworthy. I’m sure AI must have some valid use, but I’m not seeing in connection with the internet. In its current state, it’s more trouble than it’s worth.
I will continue to read and contribute to CC as long as I’m allowed and am alive.
AI is a serious issue as my son who was a self taught programmer, animator and who worked for large companies lost his job due to his replacement.
It drove him over the edge to a breakdown, from which he hasn’t recovered in over a year.
Ok, I’m an old fart, curmudgeon, whatever. I’ve reached the point where if it’s “AI” I want absolutely nothing to do with it, and despite 45 years on the Internet (my original email account was 74405,30@compuserve.com) I’m seriously starting to wonder just how much I want to be exposed to this stuff anymore.
Right now, if something says it’s “AI generated” my automatic response is, “It’s bullshit.” I’ve reached the point that, despite my using Facebook to keep in touch with extended family members who I haven’t physically seen since the mid-80’s, and various special interest groups that keep me connected with various people (17th century reenactment, vintage bicycles, vintage motorcycles, etc.) I am seriously considering dropping my membership to pretty much everything and going back to the level of computerization I was living back in the mid-1980’s.
Bill paying being the one, unfortunate, mandatory, exception.Ok, I’m an old fart, curmudgeon, whatever. I’ve reached the point where if it’s “AI” I want absolutely nothing to do with it, and despite 45 years on the Internet (my original email account was 74405,30@compuserve.com) I’m seriously starting to wonder just how much I want to be exposed to this stuff anymore.
Right now, if something says it’s “AI generated” my automatic response is, “It’s bullshit.” I’ve reached the point that, despite my using Facebook to keep in touch with extended family members who I haven’t physically seen since the mid-80’s, and various special interest groups that keep me connected with various people (17th century reenactment, vintage bicycles, vintage motorcycles, etc.) I am seriously considering dropping my membership to pretty much everything and going back to the level of computerization I was living back in the mid-1980’s.
Bill paying being the one, unfortunate, mandatory, exception.
Google search while being successful beyond the imagination from their point of view, has gone down so far in usefulness over the years it’s not even funny. What’s even worse is it still seems to be the best as bad as it’s become.
But to the point, what can I do, I come here 4-5 days a week, I have no idea how I first arrived here, I enjoy the site, but what do I as a regular here do?
You’re doing it, coming here regularly. That’s the best way to support the site, unless you want to become a “Member” which results in an ad-free version of CC:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/membership/
When I get into a conversation about classic cars (or even cars in general) with another enthusiast I frequently tell them about the CC website and encourage them to take a look.
I read a quote recently that’s quite apropos here…
“If no human being could be bothered to write it, why should I be bothered to read it?”
Me, I ignored AI immediately. Scroll down right past it and all the sponsored sites and then start looking.
I don’t use Google. Duckduckgo and more recently Brave.
This site is permanently book marked.
Interesting read and much I don’t understand. But if (that I know?) it is AI generated I tend to ignore. There is already so much misinformation on the web on almost every topic and still too many people think if it on the web it must be true. I was a Professor, teaching design for decades, and so happy to retire and avoid witnessing any further dumbing down of the our younger generations education.
I stay off social media because I don’t care what you ate today or see another selfie for god sake. I spend hours almost every morning just reading emails and visiting a few scale model hobby websites. Then I turn off the computer, and I go weeks without turning on my cell phone, mostly to delete crap texts. If someone has something important to say, call me on the old land line or use the email address I have had since the early 90s, and no I do not text. I haven’t used text since the Covid-19 lockdown only to get stuff delivered to my car in a parking lot. Thankfully I can still drive from point A to point B without GPS.
Regarding my hobby of autos I enjoy reading CC that comes to in inbox daily. I like reading about cars that I have little knowledge of. I most enjoy the comments from real people sharing their experiences with these cars. The articles with facts are educational and so are many of the comments. But it is the personal nature of CC that keeps me reading about autos I thought I had little interest in.
I am an old fart, a member of the dying Boomer generation. I was a car nut as a child in the 1950s, a teenager driving in the 1960s, so I have been fortunate to experience many changes in the auto industry and the car culture in general. OMG, my father during the Depression had to walk miles to school in hand-me-down shoes and I had to drive myself to high school in a late model T-Bird and pay for the gas myself. How did I every get around without calling an Uber on my mobile phone?
Over the last year or so some of my favorite special interest auto mags have gone out of print or consolidated together and I find that sad. I must be an old fart because I have saved these quality publications and I still buy books. Articles written by knowledgeable people, comments from real people with experiences make CC so important. So I hope CC keeps doing what they have been doing and I will continue to visit almost daily.
I’ve been reading CC for only a couple of years now and read it when prompted by an email. If I stop reading, it’s because I’m dead (I’m 82) or because I will finally get so pissed off by the plethora of ads that interrupt every article at least 8-10 times (the blank bar that blocks the bottom quarter of the page is particularly annoying).
Yes, I know I could solve that issue by becoming a member for $10/mo, but you know how many websites want the same….or more? I have a lot of interests. And there’s a lot of demand for my discretionary spending.
I appreciate your product, the talent and effort you put into it. And you’re just down I-5 from me (I’m in Vancouver, go Cougs). But still….
There is no AI. There is only other people’s data.
Paul ;
I hope you’re in good health and will continue this fine site a long time .
I’ve been here since close to the beginning, I too love the personal touches you and the commenters give .
-Nate
Every physical site offering AI services needs a bunker-buster dropped on it.
AI needs to be totally, completely, absolutely obliterated…and then made illegal.
Call me a Luddite – I avoid AI in general – but I think the population at large is rushing into it with little understanding of it, and aren’t taking the time to guard against the mental atrophy it’s likely to cause. Who’s going to build or maintain basic memory, reasoning, or problem-solving skills when AI knows the answer? Then there’s the question of what happens when it hides or mis-prioritizes information. Google has been the largest information gatekeeper there is for around 20 years, and AI promises to be a much more sophisticated (and harder to control) gatekeeper. Google is clearly not above manipulating search results based on their own biases and purposes, and AI will happily do the same – only this time, it could be motivated by what can only be described as insanity.
I got off social media years ago, and these days I go directly to sources when I can. I also avoid media that deliberately plays to short attention spans – like tiktok, but many outlets are guilty to some degree. Tragically, instead of having hobbies that help develop skills and social networks, many are instead watching others engage in various hobbies. At least some people are starting to realize that we’re losing something in the process – that our entertainment and leisure activities have become too ephemeral, and that’s why many people are turning back to things like vinyl records. Digitization hasn’t had quite as profound an effect on cars (and people) as social media and smartphones, but I doubt I’ll get much disagreement that it’s made them cold and impersonal.
That’s the great thing about CurbsideClassics: it at least gives you the ability to relive those years when cars WERE the culture to a large degree, and style wasn’t forced to take a back seat to aerodynamics and a host of regulations. Obviously, modern cars are a marvel in terms of safety and functionality, but take the hottest consumer-grade car of the last decade you can think of, grab the first one off the line, and park it next to the most pedestrian classic car in a Wal-Mart parking lot, and see which one people pay attention to.
Car culture is just one of many victims of the headlong rush into the tech/information age; we embraced computers, then the internet, then smartphones – on and on – without considering how they’d change the landscape and certainly without much in the way of firewalls. But the good news is – like my parking lot example – many are realizing it,l. Younger generations maybe more than any. Authenticity and originality are becoming priorities again, and the need to beware of things that short-circuit our information-processing cycles is becoming harder to ignore. That’s why we need sources that present a deliberate and complete story that conforms to traditional writing styles rather than constantly playing to increasingly inhuman mechanisms. It’s no guarantee of success, but it’s far more likely to produce media that is historically valid – unlike the machine-generated clickbait that too often dominates search results and AI summaries.