An Attack of Drones

AI Comments, Suspicious Profiles, and a Publication I’m Starting to Question. What’s Happening to Medium?

By author, using MidJourney. Seems appropriate for this story. ;)

This is just a quick rant, but dear Medium, what’s happening to you? I was aware of AI-generated profiles full of GPT content, but I never thought I’d be targeted by them.

I put a lot of effort into my previous story about tea houses in Czechia and Slovakia, so I was naturally happy and proud when it got accepted into a publication (which seemed perfect for such a story) and almost immediately boosted. Hooray!

But two days later, I found myself regularly with 50+ notifications in just a few hours — almost all comments that, to me, seem to be written by AI bots.

After three hours since the last log-in. :/

I thought Medium had filters to prevent this. When I looked into the profiles of these commenters, they seemed suspicious: lots of generic content, all following each other (and now me). I even posted a private note on my article to the editor of the publication, like — wtf is going on, but so far, no response.

Now I’m starting to question the publication entirely. Is it just a mirage?

If anyone knows what’s going on, I’d love to hear more.