What is Article Spinning?

One of my students of Get Paid to Write: Become a Freelance Writer asked the following:

Nicky, what is "article spinning"? I've seen that frequently in some of the ads on Freelancer.com. Just curious!

Good question! If you've been checking out bidding websites for writers or general job ads for writers you have most likely come across some people asking for article spinning. From what I understand article spinning is putting an article through an article spinner software. Basically, these types of software will change the words in the document so that it can pass Copyscape and appear plagiarism free. The spun articles comes out horrendous. It replaces many words with anything similar, which results in an article that makes no sense. Some people will even use article spinners to create several "new" articles from the one article. A robot cannot do what a talented writer can. 

What are your thoughts on article spinning?