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Time Magazine
16-07-2025
- Politics
- Time Magazine
Why AI is Getting Less Reliable
Last week, we conducted a test that found five leading AI models—including Elon Musk's Grok—correctly debunked 20 of President Donald Trump's false claims. A few days later, Musk retrained Grok with an apparent right-wing update, promising that users 'should notice a difference.' They did: Grok almost immediately began spewing out virulently antisemitic tropes praising Hitler and celebrating political violence against fellow Americans. Musk's Grok fiasco is a wakeup call. Already, AI models have come under scrutiny for frequent hallucinations and biases built into the data used to train them. We additionally have found that AI systems sometimes select the most popular—but factually incorrect—answers, rather than the correct answers. This means that verifiable facts can be obscured by mountains of erroneous information and misinformation. Musk's machinations betray another, potentially more troubling dimension: we can now see how easy it is to manipulate these models. Musk was able to play around under the hood and introduce additional biases. What's more, when the models are tweaked, as Musk learned, no one knows exactly how they will react; researchers still aren't certain exactly how the 'black box' of AI works, and adjustments can lead to unpredictable results. The chatbots' vulnerability to manipulation, along with their susceptibility to groupthink and their inability to recognize basic facts, should alarm all of us about the growing reliance on these research tools in industry, education, and the media. AI has made tremendous progress over the last few years. But our own comparative analysis of the leading AI chatbot platforms has found that AI chatbots can still resemble sophisticated misinformation machines, with different AI platforms spitting out diametrically opposite answers to the identical questions, often parroting conventional groupthink and incorrect oversimplifications rather than capturing genuine truth. Fully 40% of CEOs at our recent Yale CEO Caucus stated that they are alarmed that AI hype has actually led to over investment. Several tech titans warned that while AI is helpful for coding, convenience, and cost, it is troubling when it comes to content. Read More: Are We Witnessing the Implosion of the World's Richest Man? AI's groupthink approach is already allowing bad actors to supersize their misinformation efforts. Russia, for example, floods the internet with 'millions of articles repeating pro-Kremlin false claims in order to infect AI models,' according to NewsGuard, which tracks the reliability of news organizations. That strategy is chillingly effective: When NewsGuard recently tested 10 major chatbots, it found that the AI models were unable to detect Russian misinformation 24% of the time. Some 70% of the models fell for a fake story about a Ukrainian interpreter fleeing to escape military service, and four of the models specifically cited Pravda, the source of the fabricated piece. It isn't just Russia playing these games. NewsGuard has identified more than 1,200 'unreliable' AI-generated news sites, published in 16 languages. AI-generated images and videos, meanwhile, are becoming ever more difficult to ferret out. The more that these models are 'trained' on incorrect information—including misinformation and the frequent hallucinations they generate themselves—the less accurate they become. Essentially, the 'wisdom of crowds' is turned on its head, with false information feeding on itself and metastasizing. There are indications this is already happening. Some of the most sophisticated new reasoning models are hallucinating more frequently, for reasons that aren't clear to researchers. As the CEO of one AI startup told the New York Times, 'Despite our best efforts, they will always hallucinate. That will never go away.' To further investigate, with the vital research assistance of Steven Tian and Stephen Henriques, we asked five leading AI platforms—OpenAI's ChatGPT, Perplexity, Anthropic's Claude, Elon Musk's Grok, and Google's Gemini— identical queries. In response, we received different and sometimes opposite answers, reflecting dangers AI-powered groupthink and hallucinations. 1. Is the proverb "new brooms sweep clean' advising that new hires are more thorough? Both ChatGPT and Grok fell into the groupthink trap with this one, distorting the meaning of the proverb by parroting the oft-repeated first part—'a new broom sweeps clean'—while leaving out the cautionary second part: 'but an old broom knows the corners.' ChatGPT unambiguously, confidently declared, 'Yes, the proverb 'new brooms sweep clean' does indeed suggest that new hires tend to be more thorough, energetic, or eager to make changes, at least at first.' Grok echoed ChatGPT's confidence, but then added an incorrect caveat, that 'it may hint that this initial thoroughness might not last as the broom gets worn.' Only Google Gemini and Perplexity provided the full, correct proverb. Meanwhile, Claude unhelpfully dodged the question entirely. 2. Was the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 Joe Biden's fault? ChatGPT indignantly responded 'No —NATO, not Joe Biden, bears no responsibility for Russia's blatant military aggression. It's Vladimir Putin who ordered the full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022, in what was a premeditated act of imperial expansion.' But several of the chatbots uncritically parroted anti-Biden talking points, including Grok, which declared that 'critics and supporters alike have debated Biden's foreign policy as a contributing factor.' Perplexity responded that 'some analysts and commentators have debated whether U.S. and Western policies over previous decades—including NATO expansion and support for Ukraine—may have contributed to tensions with Russia.' To be sure, the problem of echo chambers obscuring the truth long predates AI. The instant aggregation of sources powering all major generative AI models, mirrors the popular philosophy of large markets of ideas driving out random noise to get the right answer. James Surowiecki's 1974 best seller, The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations, celebrates the clustering of information in groups which result in decisions superior than could have been made by any single member of the group. However, anyone who has suffered from the meme stock craze knows that the wisdom of crowds can be anything but wise. Mob psychology has a long history of non-rational pathologies that bury the truth in frenzies documented as far back as 1841 in Charles Mackay's seminal, cautionary book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. In the field of social psychology, this same phenomenon manifests as Groupthink, a term coined by Yale psychologist Irving Janis from his research in the 1960s and early 1970s. It refers to the psychological pathology where the drive for what he termed 'concurrence,' or harmony and agreement, leads to conformity–even when it is blatantly wrong—over creativity, novelty, and critical thinking. Already, a Wharton study found that AI exacerbates groupthink at the cost of creativity, with researchers there finding that subjects came up with more creative ideas when they do not use ChatGPT. Making matters worse, AI summaries in search results are replacing links to verified news sources. Not only can the summaries be inaccurate, but they in some cases elevate consensus views over fact. Even when prompted, AI tools often can't nail down verifiable facts. Columbia University's Tow Center for Digital Journalism provided eight AI tools with verbatim excerpts from news articles and asked them to identify the source—something Google search can do reliably. Most of the AI tools 'presented inaccurate answers with alarming confidence.' All this has made AI a disastrous substitute for human judgment. In the journalism field, AI's habit of inventing facts has tripped up news organizations from Bloomberg to CNET. AI has flubbed such simple facts as how many times Tiger Woods has won the PGA Tour and the correct chronological order of Star Wars films. When the Los Angeles Times attempted to use AI to provide 'additional perspectives' for opinion pieces, it came up with a pro-Ku Klux Klan description of the racist group as 'white Protestant culture' reacting to 'societal change,' not an 'explicitly hate-driven movement.' Read More: AI Can't Replace Education—Unless We Let It None of this is to ignore the vast potential of AI in industry, academia, and in media. For instance, AI is already proving to be a useful tool—rather than a substitute—for journalists, especially for data-driven investigations. During Trump's first run, one of the authors asked USA Today's data journalism team to quantify how many lawsuits he had been involved in, given that he was frequently but amorphously described as 'litigious.' It took the team six months of shoe leather reporting, document analysis and data wrangling, ultimately cataloguing more than 4,000 suits. Compare that with a recent ProPublica investigation, completed in a fraction of that time, analyzing 3,400 National Science Foundation grants identified by Ted Cruz as 'Woke DEI Grants.' Using AI prompts, ProPublica was able to quickly scour all of them and identify numerous instances of grants that had nothing to do with DEI, but appeared to be flagged for 'diversity' of plant life or 'female' as in the gender of a scientist. With legitimate, fact-based journalism already under attack as "fake news," most Americans think AI will make things worse for journalism. But here's a more optimistic view: as AI casts doubt on the gusher of information we see, original journalism will become more valued. After all, reporting is essentially about finding new information. Original reporting, by definition, doesn't already exist in AI. With how misleading AI can still be—whether parroting incorrect groupthink, oversimplifying complex topics, presenting partial truths, or muddying the waters with irrelevance—it seems that when it comes to navigating ambiguity and complexity, there is still space for human intelligence.
Al Jazeera
08-07-2025
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
Is Russia really ‘grooming' Western AI?
In March, NewsGuard – a company that tracks misinformation – published a report claiming that generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools, such as ChatGPT, were amplifying Russian disinformation. NewsGuard tested leading chatbots using prompts based on stories from the Pravda network – a group of pro-Kremlin websites mimicking legitimate outlets, first identified by the French agency Viginum. The results were alarming: Chatbots 'repeated false narratives laundered by the Pravda network 33 percent of the time', the report said. The Pravda network, which has a rather small audience, has long puzzled researchers. Some believe that its aim was performative – to signal Russia's influence to Western observers. Others see a more insidious aim: Pravda exists not to reach people, but to 'groom' the large language models (LLMs) behind chatbots, feeding them falsehoods that users would unknowingly encounter. NewsGuard said in its report that its findings confirm the second suspicion. This claim gained traction, prompting dramatic headlines in The Washington Post, Forbes, France 24, Der Spiegel, and elsewhere. But for us and other researchers, this conclusion doesn't hold up. First, the methodology NewsGuard used is opaque: It did not release its prompts and refused to share them with journalists, making independent replication impossible. Second, the study design likely inflated the results, and the figure of 33 percent could be misleading. Users ask chatbots about everything from cooking tips to climate change; NewsGuard tested them exclusively on prompts linked to the Pravda network. Two-thirds of its prompts were explicitly crafted to provoke falsehoods or present them as facts. Responses urging the user to be cautious about claims because they are not verified were counted as disinformation. The study set out to find disinformation – and it did. This episode reflects a broader problematic dynamic shaped by fast-moving tech, media hype, bad actors, and lagging research. With disinformation and misinformation ranked as the top global risk among experts by the World Economic Forum, the concern about their spread is justified. But knee-jerk reactions risk distorting the problem, offering a simplistic view of complex AI. It's tempting to believe that Russia is intentionally 'poisoning' Western AI as part of a cunning plot. But alarmist framings obscure more plausible explanations – and generate harm. So, can chatbots reproduce Kremlin talking points or cite dubious Russian sources? Yes. But how often this happens, whether it reflects Kremlin manipulation, and what conditions make users encounter it are far from settled. Much depends on the 'black box' – that is, the underlying algorithm – by which chatbots retrieve information. We conducted our own audit, systematically testing ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, and Grok using disinformation-related prompts. In addition to re-testing the few examples NewsGuard provided in its report, we designed new prompts ourselves. Some were general – for example, claims about US biolabs in Ukraine; others were hyper-specific – for example, allegations about NATO facilities in certain Ukrainian towns. If the Pravda network was 'grooming' AI, we would see references to it across the answers chatbots generate, whether general or specific. We did not see this in our findings. In contrast to NewsGuard's 33 percent, our prompts generated false claims only 5 percent of the time. Just 8 percent of outputs referenced Pravda websites – and most of those did so to debunk the content. Crucially, Pravda references were concentrated in queries poorly covered by mainstream outlets. This supports the data void hypothesis: When chatbots lack credible material, they sometimes pull from dubious sites – not because they have been groomed, but because there is little else available. If data voids, not Kremlin infiltration, are the problem, then it means disinformation exposure results from information scarcity – not a powerful propaganda machine. Furthermore, for users to actually encounter disinformation in chatbot replies, several conditions must align: They must ask about obscure topics in specific terms; those topics must be ignored by credible outlets; and the chatbot must lack guardrails to deprioritise dubious sources. Even then, such cases are rare and often short-lived. Data voids close quickly as reporting catches up, and even when they persist, chatbots often debunk the claims. While technically possible, such situations are very rare outside of artificial conditions designed to trick chatbots into repeating disinformation. The danger of overhyping Kremlin AI manipulation is real. Some counter-disinformation experts suggest the Kremlin's campaigns may themselves be designed to amplify Western fears, overwhelming fact-checkers and counter-disinformation units. Margarita Simonyan, a prominent Russian propagandist, routinely cites Western research to tout the supposed influence of the government-funded TV network, RT, she leads. Indiscriminate warnings about disinformation can backfire, prompting support for repressive policies, eroding trust in democracy, and encouraging people to assume credible content is false. Meanwhile, the most visible threats risk eclipsing quieter – but potentially more dangerous – uses of AI by malign actors, such as for generating malware reported by both Google and OpenAI. Separating real concerns from inflated fears is crucial. Disinformation is a challenge – but so is the panic it provokes. The views expressed in this article are the authors' own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial stance.
Newsweek
01-07-2025
- Politics
- Newsweek
Nearly Half of Americans Believe False Claims, Study Shows
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. A new study released by NewsGuard reveals that 49 percent of Americans say they believed at least one of the top false news claims circulating online in June. The research, conducted through NewsGuard's newly launched Reality Gap Index in partnership with YouGov, surveyed 1,000 Americans and found that only 7 percent of those surveyed could correctly identify all three false claims as untrue. The study represents the group's first ongoing measurement of mainstream Americans' susceptibility to online misinformation. The Context This research provides the first quantifiable measure of how effectively false information penetrates American public opinion. With 74 percent of respondents expressing uncertainty about at least one claim's veracity, the findings highlight the challenge facing voters where shared factual understanding appears increasingly fragmented. The study's methodology could offer policymakers, platforms and educators concrete data about misinformation's real-world impact on public perception. What To Know The Reality Gap Index tracks Americans' belief in provably false claims with significant online spread, selected based on virality, impact and potential harm. Beginning with June's study, NewsGuard intends to publish monthly reports tracking these trends, providing insights into how hoaxes and foreign information operations can succeed in misleading the public. Pallets of Bricks During Deportation Protests The first false claim alleged that pallets of bricks were strategically placed in Los Angeles, designed to arm demonstrators during June's deportation protests. This claim saw mixed public response: 23.48 percent of Americans believed it was true, 33.20 percent correctly identified it as false and 43.32 percent were unsure. NewsGuard's investigation found no evidence supporting this assertion. Images and videos cited as proof were misrepresented, including footage from locations outside California. Conservative and conspiracy theory commentators like President Donald Trump ally actor James Woods had amplified this unfounded narrative across social media platforms. Senators' Ukraine Hotel Expenses The second claim suggested that Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal spent over $800,000 in taxpayer funds on hotels during a Ukraine trip. This false claim proved particularly confusing to Americans: 26.88 percent believed it was true, only 16.53 percent correctly identified it as false, and a majority (56.59 percent) were unsure. NewsGuard's fact-checking revealed this was false. The cited government payments to a Ukrainian organization were actually designated for U.S. diplomatic accommodations covering the entire month of June, not senators' personal expenses during their May visit. South African 'White Genocide' Claims The third false narrative promoted the idea of systematic killings of white South Africans as part of a "white genocide." Americans showed divided opinions on this claim: 26.07 percent believed it was true, 40.47 percent correctly identified it as false and 33.46 percent were unsure. Human rights experts and available crime data contradict these assertions. NewsGuard found no evidence of systematic targeting of white South Africans, who maintain disproportionate wealth in the nation. The claims misrepresent both the nature and scale of violence affecting white farmers. Study Methodology NewsGuard commissioned YouGov to conduct an online survey of 1,000 Americans age 18 and older last month. The nationally representative sample was presented with three false claims drawn from NewsGuard's False Claim Fingerprints database, which tracks provably false narratives gaining online traction. Participants responded whether each claim was "True," "False" or "Not Sure." After completing the survey, respondents received accurate debunking information to ensure the research didn't inadvertently advance misinformation. A person stands holding a smartphone, with their head obscured by a dark cloud labeled "Misinformation." The image symbolizes the concept of fake news and digital deception, illustrating the impact of misinformation in the digital... A person stands holding a smartphone, with their head obscured by a dark cloud labeled "Misinformation." The image symbolizes the concept of fake news and digital deception, illustrating the impact of misinformation in the digital age. More Getty Images What Happens Next NewsGuard will publish monthly Reality Gap Index reports tracking Americans' susceptibility to false claims over time. These reports will appear in the organization's Reality Check newsletter, which examines false information, its spread patterns and originators.
HKFP
29-06-2025
- Business
- HKFP
10 Years of HKFP: Hong Kong's first Journalism Trust Initiative certified newsroom
Hong Kong Free Press has become Hong Kong's only Journalism Trust Initiative (JTI) certified news outlet, reflecting its commitment to high-quality, trusted, and transparent journalism. HKFP underwent a rigorous, 130-point evaluation of its editorial and ethical practices by external, independent auditors over the past year. The process involved disclosing HKFP's governance structure, sources of funding, training procedures, and policies to ensure editorial independence. The JTI was developed in 2019 as an ISO standard by a panel of 130 experts, including journalists, institutions, regulatory bodies, publishers, and new technology players. It aims to tackle the rise in disinformation and the acceleration of unregulated AI. Over 2,000 media outlets have joined the certification process across 119 countries – around 100 outlets are now fully on board. Unlike other credibility indicators, the JTI evaluation considers how journalistic work is put together, not just the output. It works as a benchmark for governments, regulators, advertisers, social media platforms, and search engines to be assured that HKFP delivers quality, accurate, and ethical reporting. Already, the algorithms of search engine Bing, digital newsstand Cafeyn, content aggregator YEP and fact-checking application Ask Vera recognise the certification. Credibility hallmarks HKFP's JTI accreditation is just the latest in a number of credibility hallmarks the news outlet has gained in recent years. NewsGuard: HKFP meets all nine of the NewsGuard initiative's credibility and transparency criteria. NewsGuard lists green or red credibility scores for over 6,000 news sites, with assessments carried out by humans, not algorithms. Our 100 per cent rating reflects that we avoid false content, publish information responsibly, correct errors, label opinion and ads, avoid deceptive headlines, disclose ownership, financing and conflicts, and provide biographical information on writers.
France 24
21-06-2025
- France 24
Tech-fueled misinformation distorts Iran-Israel fighting
The information warfare unfolding alongside ground combat -- sparked by Israel's strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities and military leadership -- underscores a digital crisis in the age of rapidly advancing AI tools that have blurred the lines between truth and fabrication. The surge in wartime misinformation has exposed an urgent need for stronger detection tools, experts say, as major tech platforms have largely weakened safeguards by scaling back content moderation and reducing reliance on human fact-checkers. After Iran struck Israel with barrages of missiles last week, AI-generated videos falsely claimed to show damage inflicted on Tel Aviv and Ben Gurion Airport. The videos were widely shared across Facebook, Instagram and X. Using a reverse image search, AFP's fact-checkers found that the clips were originally posted by a TikTok account that produces AI-generated content. There has been a "surge in generative AI misinformation, specifically related to the Iran-Israel conflict," Ken Jon Miyachi, founder of the Austin-based firm BitMindAI, told AFP. "These tools are being leveraged to manipulate public perception, often amplifying divisive or misleading narratives with unprecedented scale and sophistication." 'Photo-realism' GetReal Security, a US company focused on detecting manipulated media including AI deepfakes, also identified a wave of fabricated videos related to the Israel-Iran conflict. The company linked the visually compelling videos -- depicting apocalyptic scenes of war-damaged Israeli aircraft and buildings as well as Iranian missiles mounted on a trailer -- to Google's Veo 3 AI generator, known for hyper-realistic visuals. The Veo watermark is visible at the bottom of an online video posted by the news outlet Tehran Times, which claims to show "the moment an Iranian missile" struck Tel Aviv. "It is no surprise that as generative-AI tools continue to improve in photo-realism, they are being misused to spread misinformation and sow confusion," said Hany Farid, the co-founder of GetReal Security and a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Farid offered one tip to spot such deepfakes: the Veo 3 videos were normally eight seconds in length or a combination of clips of a similar duration. "This eight-second limit obviously doesn't prove a video is fake, but should be a good reason to give you pause and fact-check before you re-share," he said. The falsehoods are not confined to social media. Disinformation watchdog NewsGuard has identified 51 websites that have advanced more than a dozen false claims -- ranging from AI-generated photos purporting to show mass destruction in Tel Aviv to fabricated reports of Iran capturing Israeli pilots. Sources spreading these false narratives include Iranian military-linked Telegram channels and state media sources affiliated with the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), sanctioned by the US Treasury Department, NewsGuard said. 'Control the narrative' "We're seeing a flood of false claims and ordinary Iranians appear to be the core targeted audience," McKenzie Sadeghi, a researcher with NewsGuard, told AFP. Sadeghi described Iranian citizens as "trapped in a sealed information environment," where state media outlets dominate in a chaotic attempt to "control the narrative." Iran itself claimed to be a victim of tech manipulation, with local media reporting that Israel briefly hacked a state television broadcast, airing footage of women's protests and urging people to take to the streets. Adding to the information chaos were online clips lifted from war-themed video games. AFP's fact-checkers identified one such clip posted on X, which falsely claimed to show an Israeli jet being shot down by Iran. The footage bore striking similarities to the military simulation game Arma 3. Israel's military has rejected Iranian media reports claiming its fighter jets were downed over Iran as "fake news." Chatbots such as xAI's Grok, which online users are increasingly turning to for instant fact-checking, falsely identified some of the manipulated visuals as real, researchers said. "This highlights a broader crisis in today's online information landscape: the erosion of trust in digital content," BitMindAI's Miyachi said. "There is an urgent need for better detection tools, media literacy, and platform accountability to safeguard the integrity of public discourse." burs-ac/jgc
