| door Shanna Lutgert
The German magazine The actual has with artificial intelligence made a fake interview to publish ‘the first interview after 2013’ with Michael Schumacher. That violates all the laws that Corinna Schumacher, the wife of the seven-time world champion, has drawn up for the press. The Schumacher family demand that the German driver’s privacy be respected, which is why no one has heard from Schumacher himself after that one black day in 2013.
There are boundaries that should never be crossed. The Schumacher family always made sure that all the media knew about it. Since Schumacher suffered a life-changing skiing accident in December 2013, little is known about the German’s health due to his wife, Corinna’s explicit will that the seven-time world champion’s privacy be respected.
But not everyone has respected it. This is the case of the publication of an alleged interview recently published by the German weekly ‘Die Aktuelle’, which sold on the cover that they had ‘the first interview’ with Michael Schumacher, a ‘world sensation’ that they could publish for the fans, reports Sports world.
In reality, what was called an interview was nothing more than a simulation of what a chat with the German world champion would be, made through a web page with artificial intelligence which simulates the reactions of famous people. It didn’t take long for Twitter to blow up against the magazine. It remains to be seen whether the family will take action against the publication.
Interview was ‘deceptively real’
In the text, without naming the author of the piece, it was not specified at any point that it is a simulation. The sentence that the interview appeared to be “deceptively real” alerted the reader, but in a timid way. The possibility that it really isn’t an interview and that it’s all the work of artificial intelligence only emerges when at the end of the article it reads: ‘Michael Schumacher really said all this? The interview was online. On a page that has to do with artificial intelligence, or AI for short.’
To create this text, the German medium used the application character.ai which allows you to simulate speaking with famous people and answer the questions in the way this artificial intelligence believes the person in question would speak, using information from previous statements of these personalities. “No sparse, vague half-sentences from friends. His answers! By Michael Schumacher! Here it is: the great interview! With redeeming answers to the most pressing questions that everyone has been asking for so long.
Die Aktuelle has been guilty of fake interviews before
The same magazine was already controversial in 2014 with ‘Schumi’. This same magazine was already involved in another scandal with another coverstory which angered F1 fans in Germany. It was in 2014. On that cover they used an image of Schumacher from the past, with the headline: ‘How lucky! He’s in the sun.’ To illustrate that image, the magazine used a photo of the German driver, leading the reader to believe that photo was taken during his recovery process.
Later, in 2019, the ‘Daily Mail’ pointed out that the seven-time world champion may not have been in bed nor needed to be hooked up to a medical device to keep him alive. But the family did not respond to such information. So far, the Schumacher family has not responded to the fake interview of The actual. The only time the family of the German world champion did that was many years ago when they filed a lawsuit against the German magazine Bottoms. The magazine had, like The actual, gave false hope to the fans.
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