- I discovered via a Google alert an article I had never written, attributed to me.
- The article was a listicle on restaurants in New Mexico posted on a site full of similar listicles.
For 72 hours, I experienced one of the worst nightmares of a modern journalist: A byline bearing my name appeared on a digital travel publication I had never heard of or written for.
Someone had stolen my name for a story on popular restaurants in a small New Mexico town, and it read like the work of artificial intelligence. While my name was used, the site had paired it with a stock image and a standard fake bio. I had never visited the town in my life.
I'm a journalist and fiction writer and discovered the article courtesy of a Google Alert, which I had signed up for a while back to track articles and reviews of a newly published book.
My name is unique. I'm reasonably confident I'm the only Iris Dorbian out there — there are only a handful of Dorbians still alive in the US and Canada. Most died in the Holocaust. I'm also one of the few women, other than a retired book editor in Manhattan, who was born a Dorbian.
With the rise of ChatGPT and machine learning-curated work, I was deeply disturbed that someone could produce a piece of journalism that would have taken me or another credible professional several weeks to complete.
I promptly sent an angry email to the contact on the travel site, demanding they remove the fake name, photo, and bio.
I then reached out to my online network, posting the details of this identity theft on my social media platforms, and learned I wasn't the only one this had happened to.
I sought the counsel of Jane Friedman, a well-known author and publishing expert who had previously battled a similar issue on Amazon. Two weeks earlier, Friedman recounted on her blog how several books with her byline — books she never wrote — were published on the e-commerce giant within the span of a month. She posted that initially, Amazon was reluctant to remove the books, but thanks to her reputation and renown, they were finally removed.
How would I, a decidedly non-famous journalist with the global influence and clout of a cumquat, get my name back?
Friedman advised me to contact the site's web host.
"No guarantee it would work, but that's where I'd start," she urged.
A digital-savvy colleague traced the "photo" of the fake Iris Dorbian to a freelance talent site, reinforcing my belief that an AI entity was likely behind this mischief.
The next day, I contacted the site's web host and again, requested the immediate removal of the imposter byline. I crossed my fingers.
On the third day, I discovered the fake byline, photo, and bio had vanished. The listicle was still on the site, but my name and thephonye photo had been removed.
A web host representative wrote back: "I just wanted to confirm that we're looking into what has happened here with urgency."
A Business Insider editor reached out to Blake Walsh, the site's editor and founder, for comment and asked how the article was produced. (The site's "About" page contained claims that each article undergoes a "rigorous" editing screening process before being published.)
He never responded. But curiously, the article was removed days after the email was sent.
My editor also discovered that parts of the article were a direct copy-and-paste of Google Reviews. For example, the write-up of a restaurant called The Village Buttery said: "I've tried many, but nothing beats their Crab Salad Sandwich, my partner's favorite." That language was almost word for word lifted from a customer's Google Review. The article's sentiments and sentence structures also suspiciously resemble the customer review.
I followed up with author/publishing expert Friedman and asked her what made her think AI was involved in the deception that happened to her.
"I'll probably never know for sure if it's AI — there are no tools that offer a definitive answer," she wrote. "But it would be pretty hard for an individual to single-handedly write six books in the space of a month without some kind of help."
For now, I'm happy this nightmare is behind me. But given how many people are championing AI, I can't fool myself into believing that it won't happen to me again. In April, someone created an AI breast cancer survivor to be featured in a story by Insider reporter Julia Pugachevsky. Had her senses not perked up, prompting her to check the email and photo through an AI text checker tool, she would have been duped into writing a fake cancer story.
Outside journalism, the rise of ChatGPT and other AI platforms has made the FTC and other governing bodies worried about rampant consumer fraud.
This is only the beginning. Until then, I'll be on my guard, scanning the internet for writing that exploits my reputation.