Confessions of an AI Clickbait Kingpin
“I’m not a fan of AI,” Nebojša Vujinović Vujo says. The admission surprises me: He has constructed a bustling enterprise by snapping up deserted information shops and different web sites and stuffing them stuffed with algorithmically generated articles. Although he accepts that his mannequin rankles writers and readers alike, he says he’s merely embracing an unstoppable new software—giant language fashions—in the identical means individuals rationally swapped horse-drawn buggies for gas-powered autos. “I hate cars. They’re making my planet bad,” he says. “But I’m not riding a horse anymore, right? I’m driving a car.”
I linked with Vujo after digging into the unusual afterlife of indie girls’s weblog The Hairpin, which shut down in 2018. Last month, its web site reawakened. In place of the voicey, humorous weblog posts it was recognized for, the location started churning out AI-generated, search-engine-optimized pablum about dream interpretations and painfully generic relationship recommendation like “effective communication is vital.”
When I emailed an deal with listed on the zombie web site’s About Us web page, Vujo responded, claiming that it was simply certainly one of greater than 2,000 websites he operates, in an AI-content-fueled fiefdom constructed by buying once-popular domains fallen on onerous occasions. He’s the CEO of the digital advertising and marketing agency Shantel, which monetizes its AI-populated websites via programmatic adverts, sponsored content material, and promoting the location of “backlinks” to web site house owners making an attempt to spice up their credibility with search engines like google and yahoo. He usually targets distressed media websites as a result of they’ve built-in audiences and a historical past of rating extremely in search outcomes.
The basis of that enterprise is a long-established apply generally known as area squatting—shopping for up net domains that when belonged to established manufacturers and profiting off their reputations with Google and different search engines like google and yahoo. Lily Ray, senior director of website positioning on the advertising and marketing company Ampsive, calls it “the underbelly of the SEO industry.” But Vujo is a part of a wave of entrepreneurs giving this outdated commerce a brand new twist by utilizing generative AI.
It’s nightfall the place I dwell in Chicago after I discuss by way of Zoom with Nebojša Vujinović Vujo. (Although that’s the title he provides me, he has typically passed by simply Nebojša Vujinović, together with on the registration info for a few of his domains.) It’s midnight in Belgrade, Serbia, the place he lives along with his girlfriend and their toddler, however he’s awake and chatty. Vujo attributes his erratic sleep schedule to years of late nights working as a DJ and nonetheless makes music—he likes to combine pop with Balkan folks and is engaged on a brand new music known as “Fat Lady.” But proper now he’s keen to speak, human-to-human, about his AI-fueled hustle.
He will get why writers are sad that their work has been erased and changed by clickbait. (The Hairpin’s founding editor, Edith Zimmerman, calls his model of the location “grim.”) But he defends his selections, declaring that his life has been harder than that of the common American blogger. Although ethnically Serbian, Vujo was born in what’s now generally known as Bosnia and Herzegovina, and his household fled in the course of the breakup of Yugoslavia. “I had two wars I escaped. I changed nine elementary schools because we were moving. We were migrants,” he says. “It was terrible to grow up in this part of the world.” He says his financial choices have been restricted, and this was merely a path accessible to him.
Vujo additionally insists that he does have editorial requirements; though the vast majority of the weblog posts he publishes are created with ChatGPT, he employs a workers of a few dozen human editors to test its work to keep away from something outright offensive. “Maybe it would be better for you that I’m a bad guy,” he tells me. “Better for your story. But I’m just an ordinary guy.”
Easy, Fast, and Insane
Vujo’s first massive area squatting victory got here in 2017 when Italian chef Antonio Carluccio died, and it seems somebody forgot to resume one of many web sites related to him. Vujo nonetheless talks about his good luck in scooping up the area and turning it right into a cooking-themed content material mill. “It’s mine now,” he tells me cheerfully. “He almost invented carbonara—he’s a big celebrity!” Vujo has since additionally picked up Pope2you.web, previously an official Vatican web site meant to attach Pope Benedict XVI with youthful believers, and TrumpPlaza.com, named after residential towers in Jersey City, New Jersey, codeveloped by former President Trump.
Vujo says his most vital—and constantly worthwhile—buy is girls’s media outlet The Frisky, which he acquired not lengthy after he scored the Carluccio web site. “It cost a lot—all the money that I had—but that was my opportunity,” he says. “It was life-changing.” (BuzzFeed News reported on the acquisition in 2019.) Vujo says the location generated over $500,000 within the first 12 months he purchased the area. In addition to wholesome revenue from adverts and shoppers keen to pay for backlinks, the model was a magnet for firms keen to pay for sponsored posts. Because the outlet had lengthy embraced risque matters, Vujo says intercourse toy firms are desirous to do enterprise with him.
