‘News’ Site Keeps Hallucinating EFF Staffers
What do EFF staffersSarah Chen,Javier Morales,Caitlin Chin,Emma Rodriguez, andMikko Kopponenhave in common?
For one thing, they don't exist.
For another, all have been quoted as EFF experts in articles published in the past two months on a site calledNews-USA Today, whichdescribes itselfas an independent news publisher focused on clear, accurate, and useful journalism."
Uh...
(Please don't confuse this site withUSA Today, in which real EFF experts are accurately quoted on a regular basis.)
News-USA Today is hardly the only slagheap that's hallucinating or fabricating EFF personnel and quotes;as we wrote last September,media companies large and smallare using AI to generate news content because it's cheaper than paying for journalists' salaries, but that savings can come at the cost of the outlets' reputations- assuming they care about reputation at all.
But this many fake EFF sources in two months? That's making a play for the championship title of bogus news content.
News-USA Today's siteproclaims, Our goal is simple: give readers the facts and the context they need to make informed decisions." It then defines its mission:
- Deliver timely, factual reporting grounded in verifiable sources and public documents."
- Make complex topics understandable without losing nuance or accuracy."
- Serve the public interest by surfacing stories that affect lives, institutions, and communities."
- Maintain a clear separation between news, analysis, opinion, and sponsored content."
Attempts to reachcontacts listed on the sitewent unanswered.In fact, after we reached out to them,they published a story on June 9with quotes from Electronic Frontier Foundation Executive Director Jared Cohen - who also doesn't exist.
As we noted last year, EFF is all about having our words spread far and wide. Perour copyright policy, any and all original material on the EFF website may be freely distributed at will under theCreative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY), unless otherwise noted.
However, we don't want disreputable sites making up words (or false identities!) for us, whether or not they're using AI. False quotations that misstate our positions damage the trust that the public and reputable media outlets have in us.
The best thing a news consumer can do is invest a little time and energy to learn how to discern the real from the fake. It's unfortunate that it's the public's burden to put in this much effort, but while we're adjusting to new tools and a new normal, a little effort now can go a long way.
As we've noted beforein the context of election misinformation, the nonprofit journalism organizationProPublicaha
s published a handy guideabout how to tell if what you're reading is accurate or fake news," as hasFactCheck.org.
Republished from the EFF's Deeplinks blog.