Microsoft Removes AI-Generated Article Suggesting Tourists Visit Food Bank Without Eating

Microsoft has reportedly released and then withdrawn an article generated by artificial intelligence (AI) that suggested visiting a Canadian food bank as a tourist attraction. The article, titled “Headed to Ottawa? Here’s what you shouldn’t miss!”, provided recommendations such as attending a baseball game and paying respects at a war museum, along with a suggestion to visit the Ottawa Food Bank. Paris Marx was the first to raise concerns about this on X (formerly Twitter). The AI-written section about the food bank stated, “The individuals who rely on our services have jobs, families, and financial obligations. Life is already challenging for them, so it is important to consider the impact of visiting on an empty stomach.”

Before it was retracted, the article appeared on Microsoft Start, the company’s AI-powered news service that will replace Microsoft News in 2021. After The Verge reported on the article and its highly inappropriate recommendation to “go on an empty stomach,” Microsoft Senior Director Jeff Jones told the publication, “This the article has been removed and we are investigating how it made it through our review process.”

The original URL now displays the message “This page no longer exists. A new search page will load automatically.” The Verge uploaded screenshots of the original story to Imgur.

The author of the article was credited only as “Microsoft Travel,” suggesting that real people may not have been involved in its creation. Microsoft Start’s “About Us” webpage claims that it uses “human oversight” for algorithms that “comb through hundreds of thousands of pieces of content submitted by our partners” to help the company “understand dimensions such as recency, category, topic type, and opinion content and potential popularity and post user preferences.” by.” The Windows maker is said to be laying off around 50 editors from the division in 2020 and moving to artificial intelligence-generated news.

Microsoft is hardly the first company to be overly eager to use AI-generated content. Earlier this year, CNET published numerous erroneous financial reporting articles produced by artificial intelligence. Recently, Gizmodo’s parent company G/O Media published an AI-edited (also flawed) Star Wars article on the site, which associate editor James Whitbrook called “embarrassing, unpublishable, disrespectful.” While the Associated Press takes a deliberate approach to AI-powered news, other media outlets — including Microsoft’s news publisher — seem far more amenable to redeeming articles written entirely by AI, removing the inevitable wreckage after the fact.