yes. It even spits out nonsense that no yoyoer would ever write:
“Pressing stainless steel into aluminum — instead of wrapping it around — was so complex that most factories refused to try.”
I refuse to believe the YYE folk are ignorant about how bimetal construction works lol
Text editing software can automatically convert dashes to em-dashes, (quotes to curly quotes, etc.). I don’t know if they are commonly used (on purpose), but they are not unique to LLM output.
I agree here. My stance is that it does seem that AI is being used, at least for some releases, or even just parts of some release info. The complaint that some have is that plugging in basic feedback into an AI leads to reviews sounding half-baked, and some information even being contradictory.
That said, I do understand why YYE does it. As @Captrogers has pointed out, the YYE crew works their tails off for this hobby. Having AI build a review around their input can save quite a bit of time, in my mind; taking minutes instead of hours, when you include the time it takes to form a detailed opinion about how a yoyo plays, beyond the obvious characteristics. I do wonder though, if using AI could lead to reviewers not playing with the yoyo as long before deciding they have what they need? That could be an issue.
I do not know anything about the requirements YYE has for a yoyo to be released on their site, but a potential one, if they don’t have it already, could be for YYE to ask manufacturers to give them a detailed description of the product before releasing it, and use that alongside their own thoughts. That could fix the issue some have with descriptions sounding so lame; don’t get me wrong, some do. I don’t see it as a reason to cancel them though.
From the brand
Typically, yo-yos with inner SS rims are wrapped around a protruding AL. But instead, I envisioned a design where the SS was seamlessly pressed into the AL. Personally, I’ve always enjoyed yo-yos with flat hubs — both in feel and aesthetics. The downside is that flat hubs can make a yo-yo feel too hollow, or too rim-heavy.
By pressing SS into the AL, I hoped to create a unique weight distribution and a feeling I don’t think can be replicated. That said — we never made a version without the inner SS, so we can’t definitively say how much it affects play.
Having an idea is one thing, bringing it to life is another. Funny story — we submitted the concept to multiple factories and were turned down by all of them. Their concerns were valid: significant risk of damaging or bending the SS ring, scratching the AL during pressing, being unable to remove the SS once pressed, and the additional labor costs involved. Most factories suggested we just raise the AL and wrap the SS around it — not only easier, but much cheaper. But to me, that felt counterintuitive and, honestly, kind of ugly. So, I stood firm on the flat hub with the seamless SS insert.
There is more description, but I am still not confident that I understand what is going on with this design.
If you look at older YYE product descriptions they rarely had emdashes.
This could also be an artifact of an updated CMS or changes to the software used to draft the copy.
yeah ive noticed this for a while. glad im not the only one that finds it pretty distasteful. i’d rather there be no description at all than a paragraph of ai slop that says nothing
occam’s razor here implies that it’s just AI
YYE uses shopify for their backend, and I haven’t seen em-dashes pop up on other shopify storefronts without it also reeking of AI
note that i’m not claiming em-dash = AI, I just work on AI-integrated systems at the moment and see a lot of AI generated text, and a lot of these yoyo descriptions just smell like AI.
I wrote a “WTF does this mean?!” Reply to that thread, but reading the description about how there is some stainless in the center caps, I just assume there is some stainless center mass pressed into it and covered by a cap?
Idk I am still confused actually
The longer description also has a bunch of emdashes so who knows.
No idea on what is being pressed into where or why.
But I think it illustrates a broader issue. Not every brand is doing a great job characterizing their yo-yos. Maybe there is a language barrier. Maybe it just isn’t in the wheelhouse of the person who would need to tell the story. Or they don’t think that trying to communicate their design into text is worth the effort.
So why bother?
There are search engine optimization reasons for providing a description.
There are likely studies of consumer behavior that show that having even a bare-bones description increases conversion to sales over having none at all. (There may be studies suggesting that a controversial description will generate more interest than a really good one. . .)
The longer description of KEY is hosted on Shopify.
“Yoyo spin good. Better than other. Thing you like about yo-yos? This have. Thing you LOVE about yo-yos, this have but better “
idk. Having run an online storefront in a previous life, there’s so much more going on than you’d expect at any given time that I’m more than happy to give them some grace on this. There’s likely some SEO reasoning for it, but since I got out of that world I don’t know if google has begun grading for AI generated content as they had discussed, or if the full embrace has happened already.
I care a lot less about this than I do artists losing work over generative AI, but to each their own.
why write long word about yoyo when short word work good
Kevin is truly my spirit animal.
Anyhow. My real comment on this is that generally, I try to provide stores with some copy to use (directly in my sales email to them for arranging wholesale orders) but sometimes it’s not long enough for their usage. Store operators also sometimes scrounge around for more details from my forum or social media posts.
What ends up on the store page is sometimes identical to what I send, and sometimes expanded in some way. Plasm is an example where it’s a short, to the point message. Asterisk description is much longer than what I sent (and longer than what’s printed on the box).
I suppose I’ll keep an eye on this?
Ok, so I actually have this yoyo and can explain. If you look at the pictures, there is the outer SS rim like a normal bimetal, but then the hub has a shiny ring - that shiny ring is a secondary SS ring that’s pressed into the hub to balance out the extreme rim weight with some center weight. It actually provides a pretty fun and unique feel to the yoyo.
Yeah, what you say makes sense from a marketing perspective. I’m just used to always wearing my English teacher hat where this kind of writing drives me mad 
Thanks for bringing it to my attention!
So yes - there is some AI in the descriptions. However… It wasn’t really meant to be built by ‘AI’ as you are seeing there.
When we first started YoYoExpert I actually personally wrote every single description myself as I used to spend hours writing descriptions for YoYoJam too because I knew the inns and outs of the design process and it was fun to tell the story. The story behind a design, the person, the vision, or the unique aspects are always the best parts of a description because as others have said, it kind of becomes a pretty similar meshing of the same kinds of descriptors…
Over time as I was doing more things my team has helped step in and everyone obviously has their owns skills and talents working with words.
What we get from manufacturers varies. People used to spend a lot of time on descriptions. But in the current age of short form content and video being king - we often don’t get much on the description - but again - its different and depends a bit on the overall background of the design. But yeah - sometimes its nothing… Sometimes descriptions we get are super confusing because of language barriers so working with that also already gives it an off tone. We usually do ask for more background to the design and story and sometimes we get it but not always. So its a mixed bag and hence why there is some variation there too.
We initially started using ChatGPT mainly to just help with grammar and some tone changes to try and match my own personal tone of voice that I used - but then we obviously edited it more into our own words again from there. The goal wasn’t quite just ‘let ChatGPT write this’. But what you are seeing currently I do think went a bit of the rails as the versions of ChatGPT evolved (and to be honest I have had my head down working on a lot of great rebuild stuff for YoYoExpert behind the scenes (tutorials and store stuff - as @Durfee mentioned getting brands listed properly and stuff - that’s all coming very soon!) along with myself helping all the states, regional, national yo-yo contests more than I probably should have - I haven’t been monitoring this side of things as much as I should as it always meant a lot to me!)
So I appreciate you bringing it up! The intention was more for AI to be a second set of eyes on something with tweaks but it has a mind of its own and I’ll work with my team to do better here! 
AI bad 
glad that it is being addressed
