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from the and-don't-miss-all-the-Tim-Horton's! dept.
As reported by The Verge
https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/17/23836287/microsoft-ai-recommends-ottawa-food-bank-tourist-destination
and
the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/artificial-intelligence-microsoft-travel-ottawa-food-bank-1.6940356
In 2020 Microsoft laid off dozens of journalists, in a move to rely on artificial intelligence. Those journalists were responsible for selecting content for Microsoft platforms, including MSN and the Edge browser. A recent tourism article now reminds us of that earlier business decision.
Published last week and titled "Headed to Ottawa? Here's what you shouldn't miss!" the article listed 15 must-see attractions for visitors to the Canadian capital. Microsoft has since removed the article that advised tourists to visit the "beautiful" Ottawa Food Bank on an empty stomach. That appears to be an out-of-context rewrite of a paragraph on the food bank's website. "Life is challenging enough," it says. "Imagine facing it on an empty stomach."
The remainder of the must-see list was rife with errors. It featured a photo of the Rideau River in an entry about the Rideau Canal, and a photo of the Rideau Canal in an entry about Parc Omega near Montebello, Quebec. It advised tourists to enjoy the pristine grass of "Parliament Hills."
The article carried the byline "Microsoft Travel." There is nothing on the page that identifies it as the product of AI. Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment on how the article was generated. While now removed, it is still available via the Internet Archive.
https://web.archive.org/web/20230814223742/https://www.msn.com/en-gb/lifestyle/travel/headed-to-ottawa-here-s-what-you-shouldn-t-miss/ar-AA1faajY
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday August 21 2023, @04:27PM
I see it as simply another round of the endless arms race between the spammers and the search engines. Right now, the spammers have the upper hand thanks to predictive model (I refuse to call this stuff "AI" when it isn't that at all) content generation. Presumably, the search engines will put some research time and dollars into identifying predictive model content, because the spammers run their own ad networks that are separate from the search engine's so the search engine is financially incentivized to not help them out.
Will this continue to be a problem? Yes. But it's not the end of the Internet, just like Usenet spam wasn't the end of the Internet.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin