We’ve entered a golden age of idea thieves and liars
It's normal now to pass off other people’s ideas as your own. Even Google is doing it.
VITTORIO VENETO, ITALY, MAY 20, 2026 — I’ve been busy here in the Greater Venice Region warning against “emotion AI” in my Computerworld column and AI addiction in my podcast. In this piece, I slam the AI-driven rise in people who present other people’s ideas as their own. Welcome to the Machine Society.
Mike Elgan (Read, contact, and follow)
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LinkedIn is chock-a-block with “thought leadership,” where business executives show the world their unique visions and fresh ideas.
They inject new conversations into the global conversation and then engage their colleagues and the public in thoughtful, back-and-forth conversation.
It’s a great way for business leaders to demonstrate their value to prospective employers, colleagues, partners and customers.
Unfortunately, a fast-growing percentage of that thought leadership is generated by workers in the Philippines using AI and making $7 an hour, according to a well-sourced piece in Rest of World.
They’re not thought leaders. They just want people to think they’re thought leaders.
The practice of presenting others’ ideas as one’s own isn’t new. Ghost writing is a common way for prominent people who are not authors to author a book that helps their careers.
Donald Trump didn’t write a word of his “proudest accomplishment,” the book The Art of the Deal and, according to the actual writer, Tony Schwartz, Trump probably didn’t even read the book.
People with ghost-written books are not willing or able to write a whole book. They just want people to think they are.
Ghostwriting has grown far beyond books. An entire industry (Ghostfluence, Tweet Hunter, “personal brand” shops) has emerged to satisfy the demand for “thought leadership” social posts on the accounts of prominent, middle-aged leaders that are often written by 20-somethings in New York, Lagos, or Lahore.
In fact, a huge number of the social accounts of CEOs, VCs, athletes, actors, musicians, and politicians are at least partially staff-run.
Reddit is lousy with sockpuppeting, which includes fake personal stories that are actually marketing.
Substack and other newsletter sites are packed with missives bylined as founders but are in fact written by freelancers or staff members.
They don’t have the time or ability to write so many clever and engaging tweets. They just want people to think they do.
All this ghostwriting costs money. Because AI chatbots, which can also ghostwrite, are cheap or free, AI is ushering in what appears to be a Golden Age of phony liars passing off AI-generated words as their own.
Rise of AI-enabled phony liars
AI has captured a minority of journalists who have shamed the publications they work for, like CNET, Sports Illustrated, Gizmodo’s “io9,” and MSN.
Those are mostly examples of unethical journalists working at ethical publications. But unethical publications are also on the rise. Thousands of fake “local newspaper” websites publish AI- or template-generated stories under invented reporter names. Surprisingly, the number of fake “local newspaper” sites has exceeded actual local newspaper websites since 2024.
High schools and universities are rife with AI chatbot cheating. Some 30% of Princeton students use AI to cheat.
Stanford senior Theo Baker wrote in the New York Times, “I don’t know a single person who hasn’t used A.I. to get through some assignment in college.”
Hindawi/Wiley shut down 19 journals and retracted ~11,300 papers in 2023–2024 over paper-mill contamination.
Nearly half of all AI cover letters for job applicants are AI-generated.
AI-generated obituaries, eulogies, and wedding speeches, dating-app messages, op/eds, letters to congress, congressional speeches are falsely passed off as authentic.
In the content world, ghost-podcasting, ghost-YouTubing, ghost-music creation are growing orders of magnitude faster than human-created audio and visual content.
Fake Amazon, Yelp, Google, and App Store reviews are now purchased in bulk.
Authors and academics are planting AI-generated reviews of their own books.
Even Google is has embraced the trend
At yesterday’s Google I/O, the company announced a range of new products and new-product changes.
