Several of the most popular American alternative weeklies publish, alongside their editorial content, search-engine-optimized lists of porn actors that are apparently generated by artificial intelligence.
If you open the Village Voice homepage on your phone, for example, you’ll see stories from freelancers—longtime columnist Michael Musto still files papers occasionally—as well as archival work by renowned former writers like Pulitzer Prize-winning music critic Greg Tate. You’ll also see a tab in the drop-down menu titled “OnlyFans.” Clicking it opens a catalog of listicles that categorize different types of porn performers by demographic, from “Turks” to “incest” to “grannies.” These blog posts link to hundreds of different OnlyFans accounts and are presented as editorial work, without labels indicating that they’re ads or sponsored content.
Similar content appears on the websites of LA Weekly, which is owned by Street Media, the same parent company as the Village Voice, and the St. Louis-based alternative weekly Riverfront Times. While there’s a chance some of these posts may be written by freelancers, their writing style has the hallmarks of AI.
According to AI detection startup Reality Defender, which scanned a sample of these posts, the content of the articles registers as having a “high probability” of containing AI-generated text. One example scanned, a Riverfront Times article titled “19 Best Free Asian OnlyFans Featuring OnlyFans Asian Free in 2024,” ends with the following sentence, exemplary in its generic, horny platitudes: “Explore, savor, and discover your next favorite addiction, and we’ll be back with more insane talent in the future!”
“We’re seeing more and more old media being reborn as new AI-generated media,” says Ali Shahriyari, co-founder and CTO of Reality Defender. “Unfortunately, that means a lot less newsworthy, informative content and more SEO-focused junk that just wastes people’s time and attention. It’s not even part of our daily lives to follow this kind of content, and yet we’re seeing it appear more and more.”
LA Weekly released or offered severance packages to most of its employees in March 2024, while Riverfront Times released entire staff in May 2024 after the company was sold by parent company Massive Lou Media to an anonymous buyer.
The Village Voice’s sole remaining editorial staffer, RC Baker, says he has no involvement in OnlyFans posts, even though they appear on the site as editorial content. “I only cover New York City news and culture. I have nothing to do with OnlyFans. That content is handled by a separate team that is based, I believe, in Los Angeles,” he told WIRED.
Similarly, former LA Weekly editor-in-chief Darrick Rainey says he, too, had nothing to do with the OnlyFans listicles while he worked there. And neither did his editorial colleagues. “We were not happy about it at all and had absolutely no part in publishing it,” he says.
Former employees are concerned about seeing their archival work mixed with SEO porn. “It’s painful in so many ways,” says former Riverfront Times reporter Danny Wicentowski. “Like watching a beloved home being eaten by vines or left to rot.”