News/Commentary

Paper duped by AI-generated op-ed retracts ‘woke’ spray tan article accusing Irish women of racism

May 15, 2023 | | Print Article

The Irish Times was fooled by an AI-generated opinion piece that criticized Irish women for using fake tans, intimating they were racist for doing so and calling it “problematic,” prompting the media outlet to profusely apologize for the incident and retract the story.

Evidently, someone used Chat GPT4 to write the piece and then submitted it to the news outlet. It was dated May 11 and was titled, “Irish women’s obsession with fake tan is problematic.” It contended that women who use fake tans are mocking individuals with naturally dark skin, according to Fox News.

The author of the article used the fake name of Adriana Acosta-Cortez, a made-up 29-year-old Ecuadorian health worker from the Dublin, Ireland area.

The prankster tweeted after the story was retracted:

It included a link to an Irish Times article from January about AI infiltration of media.

The statement from the Irish Times on Sunday confirmed Ireland’s primary paper had been duped, “As in any 24/7 news operation, some days we do better than others. But last Thursday we got it badly wrong,” said Editor Ruadhán Mac Cormaic. “It was a hoax; the person we were corresponding with was not who they claimed to be.”

“It was a breach of the trust between the Irish Times and its readers, and we are genuinely sorry,” he further said in his statement, according to The Guardian. “The incident has highlighted a gap in our pre-publication procedures.”

 

The Irish Times claims it was the victim of “a deliberate and coordinated deception” when it discovered the author of the piece was using a fake identity and wrote 80% of the story using Chat GPT4.

“Fake tan represents more than just an innocuous cosmetic choice; it raises questions of cultural appropriation and fetishization of the high melanin content found in more pigmented people,” the story charged.

A Twitter account connected to the identity Acosta-Cortez was found to be fake according to the Sunday Independent. When the person was finally tracked down, they admitted to submitting the fake story. The hoax’s goal was “to give my friends a laugh” and “to stir the sh*t” concerning identity politics.

“Some people have called me an alt-right troll but I don’t think that I am. I think that identity politics is an extremely unhelpful lens through which to interpret the world,” the author asserted, according to The Guardian.

“I made a semi-legitimate Gmail address with no numbers and I also repurposed a Twitter account that I set up during COVID,” the person who set everything up confessed. “I wiped it and followed some accounts, news and Ecuadorian outlets, some Spanish language to make it look legit.”

After that, the hoaxster allegedly used the AI image generator Dall-E2 to create a fake profile picture of a “woke” journalist by using the words “overweight, blue hair, smug expression.”

The Irish Times editor stated that the media outlet needed to improve its vetting process and then carped about the challenges of AI.

“It has also underlined one of the challenges raised by generative AI for news organisations. We, like others, will learn and adapt,” Mac Cormaic noted.

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