Written by: Tori Grooms
The internet seems to have an answer for everything, even how to operate a 16-year-old camera.
I’ve been meaning to experiment more with digital photography, so I started tweaking the settings on my 2010 Samsung camera — but my home experiments were only getting me so far. After fiddling with the settings for thirty minutes, I took the only logical next step: I opened Safari and prayed that ten years ago someone else owned my exact camera model and was itching to talk about their experiences on an internet forum. The first article that appeared was exactly what I was looking for, titled “How to Use a Pink Samsung Camera ES55,” posted as recently as November 2025. Even the color matched, crazily enough, and I could already feel myself smiling when I started to read.
“Okay, let me start by admitting something: when I first unboxed my pink Samsung ES55 (a garage sale find back in 2018!), I stared at it like it was a spaceship control panel. I’d only ever used my iPhone for photos, and suddenly there were all these buttons and a lens that made a scary whirrr noise when it opened. But hey — six months and approximately 237 blurry pet photos later, I figured it out. Let me save you the trial-and-error headache.”
Except there weren’t 237 blurry pet photos.
There was no 2018 garage sale.
And there was no pink Samsung ES55 camera.
This person didn’t exist. This blog was created by Oreate AI, an AI workspace claiming to help create projects, essays, and blogs without plagiarism detection.
I’m not sure if this post qualifies as “meta”; to say this is a blog writing about another blog would assume a computer-generated impersonation of a human being qualifies as such. And while this essay may seem biased — because it is — I urge you to come to your own conclusions, because I value human thought.
The term “AI blog,” like “AI art,” feels like an oxymoron. The Cambridge Dictionary’s definition of a blog details “a regular record of your thoughts, opinions, or experiences that you put on the internet for other people to read.” Which is interesting, because the last time I checked, AI doesn’t contain any thoughts or opinions and is severely lacking in the personal experience category. Merriam-Webster follows up with “a website that contains online personal reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks, videos, and photographs provided by the writer.” Personal reflection is the primary descriptor and an essential element of the blog. A blog’s main purpose is to grant personal insight and allow for connectivity with others on individual interests, hypothetical questions, or how to use a 16-year-old digital camera with too many menu options.
So why are sites like Oreate AI creating AI articles? Who or what does this benefit? Surely not the spread of knowledge; some of the alleged camera functions discussed later in the text didn’t even exist. The answer is primarily search engine optimization (SEO). SEO describes the method of improving the visibility and performance of articles, posts, and videos on internet browsers so potential customers can find your content more easily. Sites like Oreate AI claim to produce “high-quality” content that is “optimized for search engines,” thus generating higher search rankings, more website clicks, and more money for the publisher. And this cash-grab AI article tactic isn’t uncommon; a recent study by Graphite revealed that over 50% of articles had been written by AI as of 2025. A large spike followed the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, and now AI has surpassed the generation of human-made writing.
And what does this tell us? Well…we are in the Inferno. Although, if it’s any consolation, I suppose we’ve already been here for quite some time. ChatGPT, disguised as blogs and videos, has been spitting back information it doesn’t know and has no stake in, and the intimate art of learning from others is under attack. Social networks are vulnerable, and we’re losing the value of what it means to be creative, interactive, and inquisitive. The allure of blogs, forums, videos, and the internet are the people sharing their stories and knowledge to help others. If these voices are replaced and littered with mass produced automated slop that lacks first-hand experience, reliable sources, or soul, this established “community” quickly becomes a content landfill.
Featured Image Caption: A glorified portrayal of your average blogger.