ChatGPT powers automated content, spam farms

Occurred: May 2023

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Content farms powered by ChatGPT and similar chatbots are spewing low-quality posts and spam in multiple languages, according to a report by NewsGuard.

The researchers discovered 49 examples of 'news' sites apparently intended to draw clicks and attract advertising revenue covering politics, technology, finance and celebrity news in Chinese, Czech, English, French, Portuguese, Tagalog, and Thai.

NewsGuard says that whilst some content is demonstrably false ('Biden dead. Harris acting President, address 9am ET.'), most people would not be able to tell if the content is generated by AI as it is not labeled as such. 

Furthermore, much of it is riddled with errors, including error messages such as 'I can not complete the prompt', and is mostly unchecked or edited by human hand.

Earlier, Vice News had reported that Reddit moderators are already experiencing a big increase in fake accounts and posts apparently generated by generative AI products like ChatGPT. 

Databank

Operator: OpenAI
Developer: OpenAI

Country: Brazil; China; Czechia; France; Philippines; Portugal; Thailand; USA; UK

Sector: Multiple; Media/entertainment/sports/arts

Purpose: Provide information, communicate

Technology: Chatbot; NLP/text analysis; Neural network; Deep learning; Machine learning; Reinforcement learning
Issue: Accuracy/reliability; Business model; Ethics; Mis/disinformation

Transparency: Governance; Marketing

Page info
Type: Incident
Published: May 2023
Last updated: November 2023