Even if this is happening in obscure journals that no-one reads, it shows just how indifferent the private publishing industry is to quality. If they can't even filter out obvious AI contributions, what purpose do they serve? The negative externality here will be damage to the reputation of science.
I'd replace "private" with "for-profit" since there are some really wonderful nonprofit, but private, publishers.
We’ve made peer-reviewed papers the currency of science. It’s not a bad system, but these couple years have exposed the flaws like no other. My field had a record number of retractions last year. Paper impact needs to be put back in the spotlight for the incoming generation of scientists.
Not only did they not filter out the AI contribution (i.e. the whole paper or at least that section), but they didn't even bother to copy edit it where the AI addresses the author of the prompt in order to make it an ordinary part of the structure of a paper.
I don't see any issue with using AI to generate text as long as the final content is good. The problem here is that nobody has proof-read the text. That is actually pretty scandalous.
Combine that with the erosion of tenure (and the national pundits cheering for it) and...not a great sign for the future of academic publishing.
It /looks/ like a scientific journal, but clearly it is not
You gotta publish for your resume, but nobody reads it