In April 2023, news evaluation group NewsGuard published a report analyzing dozens of news websites generated by AI chatbots. This report raises questions about how Generative AI could potentially amplify established fraud techniques.
The 49 websites analyzed are incredibly diverse. Some disguise themselves as breaking news outlets with generic names like News Live 79 and Daily Business Post, while others share lifestyle tips, celebrity gossip, or sponsored content. However, none of these websites mention that they are populated by AI chatbots like OpenAI ChatGPT or Google’s Bard. Many of the websites started publishing in early 2023, when these AI tools began to gain wider public usage.
NewsGuard documented several instances where the chatbots generated falsehoods. In April alone, a website named CelebritiesDeaths.com published an article titled “Biden dead. Harris Acting President, address 9 am.” Another fabricated details about the life and work of an architect as part of a fabricated obituary. A site named TNewsNetwork posted an unchecked story about the death of thousands of soldiers in the Russia-Ukraine war, based on a YouTube video. A handful of sites generated some revenue by allowing individuals to order mentions of their company on the websites for a fee to boost their search ranking.
(Source of the visual: https://web.archive.org/web/20230409093456/https://celebritiesdeaths.com/biden-dead-harris-acting-president-address-9am-et/)
Other websites used AI chatbots to cleverly remix published stories from other media outlets. They avoid plagiarism by adding sources at the end of the pieces. Biz Breaking News, for example, used the tools to summarize articles from The Financial Times and Fortune, and provided each article with “three key points” generated from the AI tools. A crafty way of laundering original pieces.
We will see an increasing number of examples of AI being used to launder original content. This includes human-made art, human-written articles, intelligent designs, and even unauthorized use of your face in commercials. This latter situation happened to Amanda Florian. She describes the case in the Wired article “I Think My Face Was Deepfaked Into a Chinese Camping Stove Ad.” She saw her face in numerous Chinese commercials, slightly altered, not a direct copy. She concluded that these practices are technically illegal under Chinese law, but… it’s a lot of work to build a case and prove that her face was stolen.
Read the full report @ https://www.newsguardtech.com/special-reports/newsbots-ai-generated-news-websites-proliferating/: AI-Newsbots