Redditors Trick AI Content Generator Into Writing About Fake ‘World of Warcraft’ Update
A new World of Warcraft feature called Glorbo has generated a lot of excitement among certain redditors, who believe it will have a significant impact on the game. The enthusiasm shown by these individuals for Glorbo has caught the interest of The Portal, a blog that shares gaming content supported by Z League, an app designed to unite gamers.
Just one problem: Glorbo isn’t real. The portal appears to use artificial intelligence to scrape Reddit posts and turn them into content.
Redditor u/kaefer_kriegerin noticed that The Portal was seemingly turning discussions from some game signatures into blog posts. They decided to try to trick the content farm into covering a fake WoW feature. The scam was a success. Other redditors chimed in, as did some Blizzard developers, as WoW Head points out.
Feels soooooo good to be able to talk about Glorbo finally, I remember my first day at Blizzard we were just starting to work on implementation, and that was almost 15 years ago!
Excellent reporting to track this down👍 pic.twitter.com/Wh1hm0gikM
— Zorbrix 💙 (@Zorbrix) July 20, 2023
The portal’s now-deleted blog post even quoted u/kaefer_kriegerin: “Honestly, this new feature makes me so happy! I just really want some major bot-based news site to publish an article about this.” You almost couldn’t make this up. An archived version of the message is still available.
The portal seems to have at least some human input. The site added “(satire)” to the post’s title before eventually removing it entirely. It also published an article based on another Reddit troll post about WoW taking players’ keys (which doesn’t happen). This blog post is also gone from Portal.
ReturnByte has reached out to Blizzard to find out if it will live up to the Glorbo hype and actually bring the feature to WoW. Blizzard is said to be using AI to create character outfits and concept art. We’ve also reached out to the Z League for comment, and we’ll let you know if they send us a (presumably AI-generated) statement.
Given the rise of generative AI in recent months, we’re likely to see a tidal wave of AI-powered websites, even mainstream publications. Earlier this year, CNET had to correct dozens of AI-generated financial transactions after errors were discovered. The site’s staff has opposed CNET’s plans to continue using artificial intelligence amid unionization efforts. Gizmodo publisher G/O Media is also pushing ahead with AI-generated blog posts, though the blog post was widely mocked for having a chronological list of Star Wars movies and TV shows. This and other AI-generated articles that appeared on the G/O Network this month outraged the company’s writers and editors.
Mistakes happen. Human writers can’t always get everything right. But any journalist worth their salt strives to ensure that their work is as accurate and fair as possible. Generative AI doesn’t quite exist yet. There have been many cases where AI chatbots have revealed false information. However, some believe that AI can actually help combat misinformation by helping newsrooms check facts, for example.
Meanwhile, Google appears to be working on an AI tool that can generate news articles and automate certain tasks to help journalists. Some critics who have seen the tool in action have suggested that it takes producing accurate and digestible news for granted.
