Letter from the editor: Standing up to generative AI

Shacknews finds itself at a crossroads as we approach the 30th anniversary of our online media outlet. Many publishers of content are using generative artificial intelligence tools and services to create all types of media, and we want to make one thing abundantly clear to our readers and viewers.

Shacknews does not and will not use generative AI in the creation of our editorial, image, video, and audio content.

We have added the following new disclosure footer to all of our articles being posted:

Shacknews staff does not use generative artificial intelligence (AI) in their content. Shacknews strictly prohibits the use of its content for AI training or to generate text, including text in the style or format used for this publication. Shacknews reserves all rights to this work.

We have also been working on the backend of our website to prevent rampant scraping techniques from various large language model (LLM) AI companies. Our website encountered several outages last year caused by overly aggressive LLM scraping, and we continue to battle this ever-moving target on the development side of our company. Many of these LLM bots ignore traditional copyright laws and sitemaps that clearly provide rules for indexing websites, and we are delicately balancing our efforts while still focusing on proper search engine optimization (SEO) of Shacknews content.

At a time when many think AI will replace the human element of all creative walks of life, it has become abundantly clear to me that the job of online media publishers has never been more important. These generative AI bots highlight a shifting of the goal posts from many technology companies away from the promise of artificial general intelligence (AGI) toward the utility and efficiency of these emerging tools.

If super intelligence is still a ways out, it stands to reason that these AI companies still need outlets like Shacknews for timely, factual information with clearly listed sources. Generative AI companies are ramping compute spending for inference models that are able to detect knowledge gaps in databases and seek out information in realtime. In this current framework of AI, the job of online publishing driven by humans reporting facts, providing opinions, and creating helpful guides is still extremely valuable. 

Shacknews will continue to invest in people and their abilities to create unique, timely, and informative content across our coverage universe. From in-depth documentaries like 24 'Til Launch: The Making of Borderlands 4 to our detailed financial reporting, livestream talkshows to podcasts, and video content that brings news and information directly to where our readers and viewers are spending their time, Shacknews will bring content made by humans for humans.

While artificial intelligence will undeniably disrupt some sectors of the global economy, it's extremely important that clear disclosure of generative AI content is implemented to prevent the spread of false information of all kinds.  

We encourage our fellow media outlets to join us in disclosing the use or lack of generative AI content on their platforms. We hope game publishers, developers, and storefronts will also take the disclosure of this content more seriously.

Asif Khan

CEO/EIC/EIEIO

Asif Khan is the CEO, EIC, and majority shareholder of Shacknews. He began his career in video game journalism as a freelancer in 2001 for Tendobox.com. Asif is a CPA and was formerly an investment adviser representative. After much success in his own personal investments, he retired from his day job in financial services and is currently focused on new private investments. His favorite PC game of all time is Duke Nukem 3D, and he is an unapologetic fan of most things Nintendo. Asif first frequented the Shack when it was sCary's Shugashack to find all things Quake. When he is not immersed in investments or gaming he is a purveyor of fine electronic music. Asif also has an irrational love of Cleveland sports.