4 main AI chatbots are churning out "important inaccuracies" and "distortions" when requested to summarize information tales, in response to a BBC investigation.
OpenAI's ChatGPT, Microsoft's Copilot, Google's Gemini, and Perplexity AI have been every introduced with information content material from BBC's web site after which requested questions concerning the information.
The report particulars that the BBC requested chatbots to summarize 100 information tales, and journalists with related experience rated the standard of every reply.
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In line with the findings, 51% of all AI-produced solutions concerning the information had important points, whereas 19% of the AI-generated solutions "launched factual errors, akin to incorrect factual statements, numbers, and dates."
Moreover, the investigation discovered that 13% of the quotes from BBC articles have been altered ultimately, undermining the "authentic supply" or not even being current within the cited article.
Final month, Apple was criticized for its AI characteristic, Apple Intelligence, which was discovered to be misrepresenting BBC information stories.
Deborah Turness, CEO of BBC Information and Present Affairs, responded to the investigation's findings in a weblog put up: "The value of AI's extraordinary advantages should not be a world the place folks looking for solutions are served distorted, faulty content material that presents itself as truth. In what can really feel like a chaotic world, it absolutely can’t be proper that customers looking for readability are met with but extra confusion."
Errors highlighted within the report included the next:
- ChatGPT claimed that Hamas chairman Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in December 2024 in Iran when he was killed in July.
- Gemini said that the Nationwide Well being Service (NHS) "advises folks to not begin vaping and recommends that people who smoke who wish to stop ought to use different strategies." This assertion is wrong. The truth is, the NHS does advocate vaping as a technique to stop smoking.
- Perplexity misquoted an announcement from Liam Payne's household after his demise.
- ChatGPT and Copilot each misstated that former UK politicians Rishi Sunak and Nicola Sturgeon have been nonetheless in workplace.
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In line with the BBC investigation, Copilot and Gemini had extra inaccuracies and points general than OpenAI's ChatGPT and Perplexity.
Moreover, the report concluded that factual inaccuracies weren't the one concern concerning the chatbot's output; the AI assistants additionally "struggled to distinguish between opinion and truth, editorialized, and infrequently failed to incorporate important context."
"Publishers ought to have management over whether or not and the way their content material is used, and AI firms ought to present how assistants course of information together with the size and scope of errors and inaccuracies they produce," Pete Archer, BBC's program director for generative AI, defined within the report.
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A spokesperson for OpenAI emphasised the standard of ChatGPT's output: "We help publishers and creators by serving to 300 million weekly ChatGPT customers uncover high quality content material by way of summaries, quotes, clear hyperlinks, and attribution." The spokesperson added that OpenAI is working with companions "to enhance in-line quotation accuracy and respect writer preferences to boost search outcomes."