The tests were carried out in The Columbus Dispatch
The American newspaper chain Gannett has suspended the use of an artificial intelligence tool designed to write news about school sports. The decision comes after several important errors were detected in articles published in at least one of its newspapersas revealed by CNN Business.
The AI in question, called LedeAI, has been generating reports for the Columbus Dispatch. Some of these reports went viral on social networks, but not precisely because of their quality. In one example, an article began with the phrase: “The Worthington Christian [[WINNING_TEAM_MASCOT]]defeated the Westerville North [[LOSING_TEAM_MASCOT]]2-1 in an Ohio boys soccer game on Saturday”, even omitting the names of the team mascots.
Readers criticized the AI-generated news for being repetitive, lacking key details and using strange language. In short, they sounded like they were written by a computer with no real knowledge of sports. CNN also identified that other local Gannett outlets, such as the Louisville Courrier Journal, AZ Central, Florida Today and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, had published similar stories generated by LedeAI.
In a statement, a Gannett spokesperson said: “We are experimenting with automation and AI to build tools for our journalists and add content for our readers. “We continually evaluate suppliers while refining processes to ensure all the news and information we provide meets the highest journalistic standards.”
For his part, LedeAI CEO Jay Allred expressed regret for the errors and promised to correct them. He assured that content automation is part of the future of local newsrooms.
Notably, CNET also paused a similar experiment after being forced to issue multiple corrections to AI-generated reports. Other media have blocked access to software from OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT, to prevent its content from being used in training AI models.
2023-09-11 05:02:58
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