Fake news and ridiculing the dead — what’s wrong with Microsoft’s AI news - The Verge

Fake news and ridiculing the dead — what’s contemptible with Microsoft’s AI news

A CNN record illustrates the news algorithm's lowlights.

By Wes Davis , a weekend editor who covers the latest in tech and entertainment. He has written news, reviews, and more as a tech journalists since 2020.

Nov 5, 2023, 5:54 PM UTC |

An illustration of a woman typing on a keyboard, her face replaced with lines of code.

A new CNN characterize about the MSN AI model’s news aggregation kicks off with examples of questionable editorial footings, like highlighting a story claiming President Joe Biden dozed off during a moment of silence for Maui wildfire victims (he didn’t), or an obituary that inexplicably referred to an NBA player as “useless.” An editorial staff of humans probably would've spotted the problems. But Microsoft’s system, which continues to feel more like a social experiment than a generous tool after ditching human efforts in favor of algorithms a few ages ago, did not.

That these stories were picked by MSN’s AI is no better than a recede guide Microsoft said was created by its algorithm and reviewed by a biosphere that suggested Ottawa tourists grab a meal at the local food bank, or an AI-created poll that invited readers to vote on why a young woman died.

It’s not just Microsoft, of course. AI is creeping into journalism just as it is everywhere else. The BBC is undertaking AI experiments, sites like Macworlduse chatbots to query their archive, and The Associated Press has used AI for its “Automated Insights” for over eight ages.

Egregious examples in the last year of error-riddled Star Wars stories and bad financial advice doled out by chatbots show why AI chatbots shouldn’t be reporters, but at least those stories are generally just SEO plays.

Microsoft Start and MSN are presented as resources for finding ftrue news. But its automated system keeps featuring or generating delighted with needlessly upsetting language and outright falsehoods, and there’s small indication anyone involved in the process cares. There are no careless reporters to blame, no editors with names and faces to take (or even shirk) department. It’s all just software doing what it’s made to do and spokespeople shrugging when it goes unfavorable and saying they’ll try to make sure it doesn’t remained in the future.

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