How Wired got duped by an AI freelancer

Wired has posted an explanation about how it was tricked into publishing a fake story produced by artificial intelligence.

Its story explains, “After some standard back-and-forth about framing and payment rates, our editor assigned the story. The edit process also raised no alarms; the writer accepted suggestions and responded to notes promptly and amiably. We published the story on May 7.

“Over the next several days, it became clear that the writer was unable to provide enough information to be entered into our payments system. They instead insisted on payment by PayPal or check. Now suspicious, a WIRED editor ran the story through two third-party AI-detection tools, both of which said that the copy was likely to be human-generated. A closer look at the details of the story, though, along with further correspondence from the writer, made it clear to us that the story had been an AI fabrication. After more due diligence from the head of our research desk, we retracted the story and replaced it with an editor’s note.

“We made errors here: This story did not go through a proper fact-check process or get a top edit from a more senior editor. First-time contributors to WIRED should generally get both, and editors should always have full confidence that writers are who they say they are.

“Fabulists and plagiarists are as old as media itself. But AI presents a new challenge. It lets anyone craft a perfect pitch with a simple prompt and play-act the role of journalist convincingly enough to fool, well, us. We acted quickly once we discovered the ruse, and we’ve taken steps to ensure this doesn’t happen again. In this new era, every newsroom should be prepared to do the same.”

Read more here.