Fortune's Top Writer Cranked Out 600 AI Stories — Now 20% of Its Traffic Is Slop

Sarah
Mon, 06 Apr 2026 14:34:02 +0000

Fortune’s Top Writer Cranked Out 600 AI Stories — Now 20% of Its Traffic Is Slop

Honestly, the journalist of the future is here. He prompts Perplexity, edits for 10 minutes, and calls it reporting.

One 42-year-old writer produced more AI-assisted stories in 6 months than any colleague managed in a full year. AI-generated articles now outnumber human-written ones on the open web.

Fortune magazine’s Nick Lichtenberg has written 600+ stories using Perplexity and Google’s NotebookLM. He once cranked out seven articles in a single Wednesday. The Disney CEO change? Ten minutes, start to publish. And Fortune’s calling it journalism.

🧩 Dumb Mode Dictionary (click for more details) 📖 The Backstory: One Man, 600 Articles, Zero Fact-Checkers (click for more details) 📊 The Numbers That Should Make You Uncomfortable (click for more details) 🗣️ What People Are Saying (click for more details) 🔍 The Disclosure Problem (click for more details) ⚙️ The Bigger Picture: AI Content Already Won (click for more details)

Cool. The news is writing itself now… Now What the Hell Do We Do? ( ͡ಠ ʖ̯ ͡ಠ)

🔍 Build an AI Content Detector Service for Publishers (click for more details) 📝 Launch a 'Human-Written' Certification Badge for Independent Media (click for more details) 💼 Offer 'AI-Augmented Journalism' Training for Newsrooms (click for more details) 📊 Create a Public 'AI Transparency Tracker' for Major Publications (click for more details) 🛠️ Follow-Up Actions (click for more details)

Quick Hits

Want to… | Do this
Check if an article was AI-written | Run it through GPTZero or Originality.ai — free tiers available
Find outlets that disclose AI use | Look for “AI was used as a research tool” disclaimers (they’re tiny and buried)
Protect your own writing from being AI-trained | Add a robots.txt disallow for AI crawlers, use the TDMRep protocol
Monetize the trust gap | Build tools or services around AI content detection — the market barely exists yet
Stay informed on AI journalism ethics | Follow Nieman Lab, Columbia Journalism Review, and the AP’s AI policy updates

Honestly, the byline used to mean someone stood behind the words. Now it means someone stood behind the prompt.

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