OpenAI’s ChatGPT AI Chatbot Linked to Partner News Organizations
An investigation by the Nieman Journalism Lab has uncovered that OpenAI’s ChatGPT AI chatbot has been providing inaccurate links to news articles published by the company’s partners. The investigation prompted the chatbot to provide links to some of the most celebrated articles by OpenAI’s partner publications, revealing that ChatGPT is often unable to reliably link to even the most noteworthy stories.
The report highlighted that ChatGPT is predicting the most likely version of the URL for a given story, rather than the correct one. This was evident in a June 13 investigation that revealed ChatGPT was hallucinating URLs for Business Insider. Further investigations found similar results for at least 9 other OpenAI partners, including The Associated Press, The Wall Street Journal, and The Financial Times.
When prompted to search for exclusive investigations by these outlets, ChatGPT often provided links to other news websites that had aggregated the information, rather than linking to the original source. Despite OpenAI’s attempts to improve accuracy by including website names in parentheses with hyperlinks, the chatbot still struggled to provide the correct URLs.
This issue is not unique to ChatGPT, as a recent investigation by WIRED on Perplexity, an Amazon-backed AI news aggregator and chatbot, found instances of inaccurate summaries and fabricated information. These inaccuracies may stem from the AI reconstructing article content from incomplete data sources.
OpenAI has faced legal challenges from news publications for copyright infringement, while also striking content licensing deals with major news operations. These deals aim to benefit both parties by driving traffic to news sites while allowing OpenAI to use their content with proper attribution. However, recent developments may impact the success of these partnerships.
The digital news landscape is evolving, with publications facing challenges like declining ad revenues and issues with large tech platforms. Collaborations with AI startups like OpenAI could offer solutions for distributing content and driving traffic, but both parties must address accuracy and copyright concerns for these partnerships to succeed.
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