Good morning from the team at Press Gazette on Monday, 13 July.

🤖 Bauer Media appears to have deployed AI writers on its monthly compendium of short stories – Take A Break’s Fiction Feast.

Regular freelance writers for the magazine have been told their services are no longer required as more AI is deployed in-house.

As far as Press Gazette can ascertain, this appears to involve whole stories being drafted by the dead hand of AI and credited to “The Fiction Feast Team”.

My feeling is that when it comes to creative output, most people have an instinctive loathing and distrust of artificially-created work.

Bauer Media has not responded to requests for comment, but I suspect costs are tight and this drastic measure has been deployed to keep the title going and keep the remaining named human authors in work.

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🗽 Deep traffic drops across the board at US titles in June provide a warning of what is likely to come in the UK.

Looking at the top ten US websites, most lost more than 20% of their traffic year on year. The only exception was Substack, which rose 25% year on year and is now the eighth biggest news website in the US (fuelled by its reliance on direct traffic rather than search or social).

The US is on the frontline when it comes to AI disruption. And free from the threat of regulatory intervention, Google operates with a freer hand in its home market when it comes to the rollout of AI Overviews and AI Mode.

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🌍 Looking at the biggest news websites in the world, the BBC retains a healthy lead at the top of our ranking with nearly one billion visits in June (up 5% year on year according to Similarweb).

Sadly, 45 sites saw traffic decline year on year - and 36 of these fell by more than 10%.

Six of the ten biggest fallers were India-based titles. And Buzzfeed saw the second biggest decline, dropping 48% year on year to 46 million visits per month.

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🤏 News In Brief

Bristol Live left an apparent AI prompt response in a Facebook post, while Marie Claire left an AI prompt in an article about the new movie adaptation of The Odyssey, in the latest additions to Press Gazette’s live tracker of AI mistakes in journalism.

This week's Foresight News diary includes the World Cup final, the Labour Party expected to confirm Andy Burnham as PM, and the start of the BBC Proms. (Press Gazette)

Former ITV Evening News, BBC News at Six and Ten, BBC Breakfast and Sky News presenter Dermot Murnaghan has died aged 68, a year after revealing he had been diagnosed with stage four prostate cancer. (BBC)

Ofcom has told platforms like Facebook they must crack down on scam adverts including by banning accounts that post them and making them easier to report. (