[HN Gopher] MSN replaced journalists with AI publishing fake new... ___________________________________________________________________ MSN replaced journalists with AI publishing fake news about mermaids and Bigfoot Author : cpeterso Score : 106 points Date : 2022-12-03 20:00 UTC (2 hours ago) (HTM) web link (futurism.com) (TXT) w3m dump (futurism.com) | civilized wrote: | I'm confused about what "the rules" are for fake news. Once we a | week we go to the supermarket, and lining the checkout aisle we | see tabloids peddling what seem to be obviously false celebrity | gossip stories, but presented as news. This has been going on for | as long as I can remember - so, at least 30 years. | | I guess we're supposed to be alarmed here because MSN was once | not a tabloid? Not that I would know, I've never read it. | kodah wrote: | Tabloids are not different than much of the shitposting some | people do on the internet. They'll take one small truth and | extrapolate it into an entire learned lesson based on smoke and | mirrors. The gossip end is just kind of gross to me, but I'm | already the kind of person that doesn't hang out with people | that tend to gossip. | bombcar wrote: | Amusingly enough if you actually _read_ the tabloids (or at | least decades ago this was true) they often were just reprints | of actual small-time news stories; the tabloids basically made | the front cover out of "Bob in Bobville said what his brother | done got et by a hornytoad". | truculent wrote: | IIRC the original term was coined for a specific type of | misinformation where the aim is to erode trust in institutions | and truth in general by bombarding people with incorrect news | (kind of like a DDoS on truth). This is differentiated from | salacious tabloid gossip or from propaganda (which seeks to | push a specific, alternative truth). | | However, now the vernacular use seems to be totally | undifferentiated, yes. | spookie wrote: | Disinformation can go hand and hand with propaganda, look at | the current European war. I get what you're saying, but just | pointing out that it can be used in detriment to the morale | on the other side of the fence. | MonkeyMalarky wrote: | Yes? It is the steady and constant decline and spread that is | the problem. | civilized wrote: | I tend to agree, just thinking out loud. | | Filling grandma's trusted news page with nonsense is elder | abuse, and could be much worse if they hit her with, say, | antivax conspiracies at the right time. | DiggyJohnson wrote: | I don't see what the specificity is very relevant. | Declining quality of reporting hurts everyone, grandma and | kids and geniuses and morons all. | civilized wrote: | It's relevant because we can't imagine the impact on | everyone. If we try, we simply imagine ourselves. | | I certainly agree that grandma is not the only kind of | person who could be harmed by this. | bawolff wrote: | Its hardly steady and constant. There is a recent spike, but | "yellow" journalism was a really big thing historically. | MintsJohn wrote: | Gossip is presented as gossip, fake news a news (or in this | case facts). | | (I read the article twice, the website being unknown to me I | thought it was fake news, and it still seems weird to me that | MSN uses AI generated content, otoh why not, the mess MSN | forces on me in windows has been distopian for years, and the | mentioned article appears on MSN. Sad times that these days I'm | sceptical of anything. I honestly feel this is one of the | biggest dangers of our times, the ease with which populations | can be influenced and truth is just a matter of alternative | facts, the common argument is that it is of all times but that | neglects how much easier, more sophisticated, and larger the | reach is) | fjsofkjdsfkos wrote: | If there's any doubt about the authenticity of Futurism, you | can click through and read the MSN "articles" for yourself. | It's definitely real! | | I do think there's some confusion here over exactly what's | happening. MSN's AI isn't generating entire articles like | GPT-3; it's just using AI to curate articles for | republication from across the web, but accidentally (or | perhaps intentionally, in a sort of wink-wink situation for | clickbait traffic) selecting ones that are clearly fake news | (including literal stuff about mermaids and bigfoot.) | MintsJohn wrote: | Ah yes, with all the GPT3 news I thought MSN was using it. | Thank for correcting that assumption. Doesn't make the | situation any better of course, it's just that MSN | forwarding anything unfortunately is no news to me. | toldyouso2022 wrote: | Fake news are good for society because it forces people to | triple check when they wanna know something. Not all people | will triple check everything, but it's better than a society of | people believing whatever comes from authority. | | Also censorship is bad and all that. | | Thank you fake news! | system2 wrote: | Unfortunately people are not as evolved as you think. They | still believe fake news. | blooalien wrote: | Worse than just believing it ... these days they can | (nearly) instantaneously share it to zillions of other | people around the world many of whom will _also_ believe | (and re-share) it, and few in that chain will bother to | fact-check it themselves, and of those few, even _fewer_ | will take the time to call out the error / misinformation, | and even if they do, they'll almost instantly be shouted | down and ridiculed by all those who just outright _refuse_ | to see facts when they really _really want_ to believe a | lie. This of course leads the average "volunteer" fact- | checker to just sooner or later give up even _trying_ to | fight the growing waves of "fake news", and keep their | fact-checking to themselves; Not good for _anyone._ | DemocracyFTW2 wrote: | Some people have been alarmed about this and did drag | publishers to the courts over fake news parading as truth for | much longer than three decades. That it has been having a | constant presence for as long as you can think and doesn't do | harm to you personally doesn't mean it's not a societal | problem. Car exhausts haven't killed you in the past and have | been around for ages, so... more car exhausts should be no | problem, no? Especially when I choose to ignore them? | civilized wrote: | My comment is directed at our confusing historical norms. | Personally I would be happy if all this nonsense would go | away. Not quite sure what can be done about it though. | | Seems like it would be good to have more nonprofit news | organizations with credible dedication to integrity. | [deleted] | hanafudafan wrote: | I'd rather have machines writing fake news than humans, | personally. | nmz wrote: | This doesn't seem like a credible news source. | bhawks wrote: | Last week YouTuber Allen Pan launched Canadian United Media in | response to CNN using one of his previous videos unattributed on | their platforms. The site is all AI generated from a model | trained on CNN content. Funny to see MSN putting another Allen | Pan idea in to practice. | | https://youtu.be/lCSrN-e_dkE | | https://canadian-united.media/ | Aeolun wrote: | Ah yes, I can see how someone could mistake this for a real | news article: https://canadian-united.media/2022/12/03/your- | guide-to-findi... | dpflan wrote: | Excellent, indeed, this will happen more and more, completely | made up infinite content that seems very real, news site, | entire functioning social graphs/networks with believable | characters... | djkivi wrote: | CUM? | dpflan wrote: | Were the main images for each article generated by AI too? They | are pretty funky, especially the "Fishermen Catch Mermaid | Creature in Their Nets" (https://www.msn.com/en- | us/news/technology/fishermen-catch-me...). | StanislavPetrov wrote: | duxup wrote: | I always assumed this was happening to an extent already, | particularly with sports. In the sports news world you get all | sorts of "season previews" and various articles with "each team's | strength's and weaknesses". | | If you weren't a fan of big name teams you'd inevitably find with | your team: coaches mentioned who weren't there anymore, players | who weren't there anymore, and various outdated factoids / | concerns thrown in. Some "concerns" almost felt like an AI | trained on fan forums where issues fans had, but had no place in | reality were raised, with even local fan forum lingo tossed in | ... | | If it was a person, or a script that generated content that got | doctored by a person I don't know, but the patter was very clear. | awillen wrote: | That sounds like it's roughly on the level of Steven A. Smith. | wellthatsawrap1 wrote: | trident1000 wrote: | baxtr wrote: | What Intel are you referring to? | CrazyPyroLinux wrote: | Probably | https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598822959866683394 | trident5000 wrote: | I think hes talking about a thread on Twitter where it was | exposed the Biden admin was working with Twitter employees to | take down content for political reasons. | nickthegreek wrote: | That's one way of stating it. | | Another would be that people associated with the private | citizen Biden requested that Twitter review tweets that | were against the tos. Those tweets appear to be revenge | porn. Twitter took down some. | deadly_syn wrote: | Can you really consider someone who has held public | office for that long (or their immediate family) as a | private citizen? Even if you were friends with the biden | family before they had any political power, would you not | prioritize what they ask of you after they gained that | power? People like having famous and powerful friends | usually and will go out of their way to keep them. | [deleted] | nickthegreek wrote: | Well it sounds like the argument you want to make is that | it's wrong if the people in power request Twitter to | enforce their tos on specific tweets? If so, it might | interest you to know that the actual administration in | charge at the time also requested tweets to be removed | for tos violations and those some of those were honored | too. | | If anything, I believe, in the interest of tranparency, | Twitter should make all such requests from governments | available to the public moving forward. | [deleted] | trident5000 wrote: | ok123456 wrote: | Did anyone notice? | muststopmyths wrote: | What a sad shitshow. News used to be a really good app on windows | phone. | [deleted] | fjsofkjdsfkos wrote: | I think people are somewhat misunderstanding what's going on in | this story. MSN's AI isn't generating stories wholesale like | GPT-3 -- it's selecting other publications' stories from across | the web for syndication, but doing it automatically after the | company fired the team previously responsible for that curation | process in 2020. Unfortunately, this new system is clearly not | exercising good judgment about what articles or publications are | credible, because of the ridiculous stuff that it's republishing | from fake news sites about bigfoot, mermaids, monsters on Mars | etc. | [deleted] | heather45879 wrote: | I'd like to point out this extends to the actual Windows 11 OS | because they relentlessly push National-Enquirer calibre news | to users. Want to get something done? Hit Windows key and start | searching for that app you want to use--only to be force-fed a | bunch of celebrity gossip because it prefix-matches the search | term and they want to sell Ad impressions. | | I used to have high hopes for some of Microsoft's innovations | like Zune, Windows Phone, connect, Rosalyn--that glimmer of | open-source-hope from the Evil Empire. | | But it's obvious now they are not really good at anything in | the consumer space anymore: Hopping on the ad bandwagon because | that's what Google does; stealing the OS X taskbar placement | for no good reason; turning the OS into the spyware folks used | to dread at the turn of the millennium; now we need apps to | remove Windows features just to use our computers. | Aeolun wrote: | Oddly enough the thing driving more advanced users to linux | now isn't that Linux is so good. It's that MS and Windows are | so bad. | DemocracyFTW2 wrote: | Funny how these days everybody seems to think that the world | should be run without anybody else. | this_steve_j wrote: | I would classify this sort of info-entertainment masquerading as | journalism as "zombie news" or perhaps "garbage pail news". | | It lacks a sufficiently insidious motive to be considered "fake" | news, although an argument could be made that it erodes trust in | traditional media outlets when a publication with significant | reach goes fallow. | | It has all the trappings of a media outlet but none of the | editorial brains. | musicale wrote: | After two years of pandemic/polarization/climate | disaster/war/recession/etc. doom and gloom I'm kind of ready for | some reporting on mermaids and Bigfoot. | | Maybe they should bring back the print edition of the Weekly | World News. | | MSN might also consider adding The Onion since it seems about as | accurate as many published news sources. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-12-03 23:00 UTC)