A cold wind is blowing for truth

We’re heading towards a “truth winter” thanks to generative AI. It’s an issue all corporate affairs managers should be preparing for.

As you’ll read in this week's Reputation Week, AI-written content is spreading quickly, on social media, in books and on news sites. The motive for much of the online content is programmatic advertising. Online booksellers need to take responsibility and clearly identify material not written by humans, and it’s time for advertisers, marketers and professional communicators to examine their advertising spend to ensure they’re not contributing to bleak times ahead for those that value accuracy and truth.??

More worrying is the sinister side of information distortion which has been made easier and distributed more quickly, thanks to AI. I’m sure we’ll read more about that in the weeks and months ahead.?

Publishing: AI written books by fake authors flood Amazon

The Washington Post is reporting that “a fast-growing iceberg of AI-written content (is) spreading across the web".

Online publishers have been using automated writing tools for years according to the story.?Because they’re quick and easy to produce, publishers can afford a wide variety of niche books.

“What that may mean for consumers is more hyper-specific and personalised articles — but also more misinformation and more manipulation, about politics, products they may want to buy and much more,” journalist Will Oremus said.

The story quotes ethics scientist Margaret Mitchell who says vast, unvetted pools of online data may not be grounded in reality.?

“The main issue is losing track of what truth is,” she said. “Without grounding, the system can make stuff up. And if it’s that same made-up thing all over the world, how do you trace it back to what reality is?”

News media: AI powered content farms feed clickbait sites

NewsGuard, an online news trust rating organisation, has found almost 50 online news sites that are written almost purely by AI, and has warned that “a new generation of content farms is on the way”.

According to a special report just published, NewsGuard says “artificial intelligence tools are now being used to populate so-called content farms”. They churn out vast amounts of clickbait articles to attract advertising revenue.

“The websites, which often fail to disclose ownership or control, produce a high volume of content related to a variety of topics, including politics, health, entertainment, finance, and technology. Some publish hundreds of articles a day and some of that content advances false narratives.

“Concerns that they could be used to conjure up entire news organisations?— once the subject of speculation by media scholars — have now become a reality.”

The Arts: UK MPs investigate AI’s impact on creative industries

The UK House of Commons Science, Innovation and Technology Committee will hold an evidence session on ‘Artificial intelligence and the arts: How is AI impacting the creative industries?’ on May 10. The session will call for expert advice and look at the impact of AI on the creative industries, and the implications for intellectual property (IP) and copyright law.

Advanced Television reports that MPs “will explore how artists have been impacted by the growth in AI tools”.

Accuracy: AI and Communication: Fast, cheap or good? Pick two.

Current AI tools are cost-effective and time-efficient but lack quality, according to Aaron Kwittken in PR News.?

“AI can’t run the show itself,” Kwittken believes.

“(There are) many objective factors to consider with fully AI-generated content. Accuracy is chief among them,” he says pointing to Vanderbilt University’s apology after it was revealed it had used ChatGPT to write a “flawed email” to students following a mass shooting.?

“Writers who get ahead of the curve and begin embracing AI will end up having an advantage over those who resist it.”

Ethics: PR Council releases guidelines

The PR Council has released guidelines for generative AI use by agencies in their work for clients. The guidelines are based on the PR Council Code of Ethics and Principles.

Amongst the guidelines are suggestions to:

• use caution when putting confidential client information into generative AI
• not use generative AI images as final creative for client campaigns
• not to use generative AI to create or spread deep fakes, misinformation or disinformation?

You can download the guidelines at prcouncil.net and watch the webinar below.

Regulation: AI industry leaders meet at the White House?

The CEOs of Alphabet, Microsoft, and OpenAI were amongst industry leaders to meet at the White House last Thursday.?

Axios reported that “the CEO meeting builds on previous White House efforts such as the blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights and the AI Risk Management Framework”.

US Vice President Kamala Harris said, in a statement after the meeting, that “the private sector has an ethical, moral, and legal responsibility to ensure the safety and security of their products”.

You can read the full statement here, and you can read the White House fact sheet on the Biden-Harris Administration Actions to Promote Responsible AI here.

Consumers: UK competition watchdog bares its teeth to AI developers?

TechCrunch reports that the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is investigating “the likely implications of the development of AI foundation models for competition and consumer protection”.

The review will:

• examine how the competitive markets for foundation models and their use could evolve
• explore what opportunities and risks these scenarios could mean for competition and consumer protection
• produce guiding principles to support competition and protect consumers as AI foundation models develop.

Law: The AI future for lawyers involves emotional intelligence

In what could be one of the most surprising implications of the introduction of AI, Corporate Secretary has quoted prominent shareholder activist, corporate governance advocate, and lawyer Robert Monks as saying in a podcast that “the role of lawyers is going to narrow, and the future role of lawyers will be to apply judgement, creativity and empathy – emotional intelligence – to the questions and projects clients give them”.

You can listen to the podcast here:?

SnapChat’s AI irks users

SnapChat has come in for a barrage of abuse by users after the platform introduced an AI chatbot at the top of users' feeds. The service is “powered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT (and is designed) to answer trivia questions, suggest recipes, provide trip recommendations, offer buying advice,” according to the iThinkDifferent blog.

Techcrunch reported that there was a spike in 1 star reviews for the service as users panned the “My AI” feature and called for its removal.?

“The backlash against Snapchat’s My AI comes at a time when the hype around AI is at an inflection point. Companies are weighing how to integrate AI into their businesses, not if they should,” Techcrunch said.

In brief

• Forbes has published an online article advising how to manage the evolving rules of AI and Intellectual Property.
• In a speech to the US Senate, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said “AI is one of the most pressing and serious policy issues we confront today.” This is not an ideological issue, he said, “anything we do regarding AI must be thoroughly bipartisan”.
• In widely reported remarks, the “Godfather of AI’ has warned about the possible dangers. Former Google employee and neural network expert Geoffrey Hinton said “I want to sort of blow the whistle and say we should worry seriously about how we stop these things getting control over us.”
• The International Institute for Management Development (IMD) has warned that society is at an enticing, but dangerous, fork in the road. “Companies need to set safety standards and ensure robust ethical oversight (of AI).”?
• UNESCO has called for urgent action on gender equality in AI. “There is an urgent need to rebalance the situation for women in AI to avoid biassed analyses and to build technologies that take into account the expectations and needs of all of humanity,” according to Audrey Azoulay, the Director General of UNESCO. Report via Women’s Agenda.?
• Meltwaters’ head of Marketing for Africa, Katherine McInnes, believes AI has a role to play when it comes to crisis management. AI technology is able to collect vast amounts of data from platforms like TikTok and Instagram to podcast episodes, McInnes told Hypertext.
• Scientists have been able to use GPT AI to passively read people's thoughts according to a story in Vice. “The breakthrough marks the first time that continuous language has been non-invasively reconstructed from human brain activities, which are read through a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine.”?