When is Vocal NOT Vocal?

After several years of writing on this platform I believe I'm pretty quick to recognize Vocal's brand and icon.

I subscribe to several official Vocal 'creator' profiles so that I can stay in the know about updates, enhancements, changes in policy, and what-have-you.

I follow Vocal COO Justin, and also Creat'd Founder Jeremy Frommer, the Vocal Team, the Vocal Curation Team, the Vocal Raise Your Voice by Vocal, and even the (much missed by me) Vocal Creator Chat because I hope it will be back again some day, and the Creat'd Investor Relations account. Probably I follow others that post less often than even that last one... but that's enough for now.

That is why I was surprised by the presence of a NEW Vocal 'creator' account that posts only AI Generated content. Here's a screen shot of the profile:

"How did I miss this one?!", I thought to myself. And then "I really need to add all of the official Vocal profiles to a Creator 101 article. Maybe in the FAQs article. I'll check to see what it's for..." and then off I went to click on all of the new fabulosity that is my experience in Vocal posts.

Except.

Every one of them is AI generated. AND properly attributed as such. So, thought I, maybe it is Vocal doing this as proof that AI generated doesn't get 'eyes'? Maybe that was it? So I poked around.

Hearts and comments. Truly. Hearts, comments... and comments answered with offers to make available for purchase things to solve imagined problems. In other words- marketing. Well. OK.

Some comments acknowledged the AI:

How can this be legit? (Yes- I reported it on the Vocal Discord channel, but haven't seen any response. There are bigger fish to fry and cyber attacks to deter, I know- but this looks like brand larceny to me.

Yes- I reported a few of them, specifically asking if the Vocal team knew their name was being used. As the 'stories' keep arriving, and I might have sent some people their way by publicizing it on Discord, it seems no one is worried about it.

This must be the only pilfered trademark-profile, right?

WEEELLLLLLL. Not exactly.

^not active, but the profile still exists^

^Brand new profile. ^ Doesn't attribute content to AI... but the 'In today's fast-paced world...' and other standard structure is.. well.. you decide.

^Existing profile- same name... No attributed ai, but 'in today's digital world' is alive and well here, too... so......

So... I just stopped looking, dear reader.

Maybe there's more out there, maybe there isn't. Maybe they are all the same person, maybe they aren't.

I've gone this route before and, frankly, I'm busy at work and trying to encourage those striving for social justice. This is a distraction.

Speaking of distraction, though: I did notice a familiar name from my more prolific Medium days. (I still write there every once in a while, but- honey! They are going through some stuff over there and again: I have plenty of other things to do.)

Any-who: two YEARS ago a 'writer' was the subject of numerous articles, speculation, and general writerly hysteria. These days searching for 'her' name brings the dreaded empty '404' response that it has been deleted in violation of Medium standards.

This profile was made both on Vocal and Medium at the same time. However, the 'stories' just appeared her 2 months ago- years after the profile was created.

How many stories? So glad you asked. There are 173 so far to date. Each and every one of them properly attributed as AI-generated , according to Vocal standards.

I guess that would have answered the speculation on Medium, if that had been a 'thing' then.

Maybe pretending to be {or riding on the coattails of} Vocal will also be a 'thing' one day.