An interview with Nebojša Vujinović Vujo, who runs 2,000+ AI-generated news sites, often hosted on popular, dormant domains, and claims to have human editors
Serbian DJ turned internet entrepreneur Nebojša Vujinović Vujo floods abandoned news sites with AI-generated articles. X: @knibbs , @emilybell , @knibbs , @katiedrumm , @dannygroner , and @faris See also Mediagazer X: @knibbs : This whole scheme is so bizarre, I couldn't fit a lot of stuff into the story, including that he used to run one of the most popular Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson Facebook fan pages and would use it to drive traffic to his SEO blogs...but then he forgot the password Emily Bell / @emilybell : This is an insane story from @Knibbs - and for those starry eyed or in denial and AI+ news - a must read. (The bitter irony of Jimmy Lai being wrongly held whilst his abandoned news site Apple Daily is turned into a ChatGPT click farm is peak 2024 ) https://www.wired.com/... @knibbs : A few weeks ago I looked into why The Hairpin got turned into a weird AI clickbait farm. Turns out, it was the tip of the iceberg—the same guy owns the domains of thousands of other sites, including prominent pro-democracy Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily: https://www.wired.com/... Katie Drummond / @katiedrumm : A must-read from @Knibbs > Meet the Serbian DJ running an empire that scoops up defunct news sites and turns them into gen-AI content farms. He calls the work, which includes garbage takeovers of The Hairpin and Apple Daily, “easy, fast, and insane.” https://www.wired.com/... Danny Groner / @dannygroner : “If Google can choke off the traffic that feeds operations like Vujo's, what media outlets remain would face less competition in search and other feeds from AI-generated rivals. Making a living, or a business, out of journalism would be tough, but the fight might be fairer.” @faris : “For Vujo it's not personal, though. “I'm just one guy who, yes, in business I am using AI to create shitty content on the internet to earn money or a fortune,” See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
This investigation makes visible the industrial scale behind generative-content farming: control of dormant, recognizable domains can be paired with automated publishing and claimed human review. It follows an earlier publisher-side signal in which G/O Media said it would expand AI-generated publishing despite early errors.
The distribution logic also resembles an older playbook of using networks of news sites and social groups to manufacture reach, now made cheaper by generative AI. Later reporting on AI-made copies aimed at social-platform audiences suggests the tactic is not confined to search-facing sites.
First-order effects
- Vujo’s domain portfolio can turn abandoned publication identities into high-volume outlets, placing readers and any advertisers or platforms that surface the material closer to low-quality automated content.
- His stated use of human editors creates a practical accountability question: the relevant distinction is not whether AI is used, but whether editorial review meaningfully governs what is published.
Second-order effects
- Search and social platforms face a harder provenance problem: recognizable legacy domains may not reliably signal a current newsroom or a reliable editorial process.
- Publishers with established brands must compete for attention against much lower-cost output, while domain owners and hosts face greater pressure to vet how dormant properties are repurposed.
Third-order effects
- If this model persists, domain reputation becomes an input to automated content distribution rather than evidence of an operating newsroom, weakening a long-standing shortcut readers use to judge source quality.
- The episode fits a likely shift toward provenance, disclosure, and quality-based controls over simple domain-level trust, though the corpus does not establish which platforms will impose them.
The trend: Generative AI is lowering the cost of converting dormant web assets and existing distribution channels into commercial content networks, increasing the value of verifiable provenance.