The Guardian rips Microsoft for distasteful generative AI poll about death
►https://www.axios.com/2023/10/31/guardian-microsoft-generative-ai-poll-death
Sara Fischer (Axios Media Trends)
Screenshot of the poll, which was removed Monday, Oct. 31.
The Guardian Media Group is demanding that Microsoft take public responsibility for running a distasteful AI-generated poll alongside a Guardian article about a woman found dead at a school in Australia, according to a letter from The Guardian CEO Anna Bateson to Microsoft president Brad Smith, obtained by Axios.
The poll, which ran within Microsoft’s curated news aggregator platform Microsoft Start, asks the reader what they think the cause was of the woman’s death featured in the article.
Why it matters: While Microsoft did eventually remove the poll, the damage was already done.
Readers slammed The Guardian and the article author in the poll’s comments section, whom they assumed were responsible for the blunder.
Details: “This is clearly an inappropriate use of genAI by Microsoft on a potentially distressing public interest story, originally written and published by Guardian journalists,” Bateson wrote.
“This application of genAI by Microsoft is exactly the sort of instance that we have warned about in relation to news, and a key reason why we have previously requested to your teams that we do not want Microsoft’s experimental genAI technologies applied to journalism licensed from the Guardian.”
Between the lines: Bateson urged Microsoft to add a note to the poll, arguing there’s a strong case for Microsoft to take “full responsibility for it.”
She also asked for assurance from Microsoft that it will not apply “experimental technologies on or alongside Guardian licensed journalism” without its explicit approval.
She accused Microsoft of failing to “substantively respond” to the Guardian’s request to discuss how Microsoft intends compensate news publishers for the use of their intellectual property “in the training and live deployment of AI technologies within your wider business ventures.”
Microsoft didn’t immediately respond to request for comment.
The big picture: Newsrooms have been grappling with ways to leverage artificial intelligence responsibly while ensuring they don’t compromise their editorial content.
Many are currently pushing tech firms to pay them to use their content to train AI models.
What to watch: Following an embarrassing publishing experiment from CNET earlier this year, more media companies are including disclosures of the use of AI in their editorial products.
In her letter to Smith, Bateson asked that Microsoft always make it clear to users “wherever genAI is involved in creating additional units and features as they apply to third party journalism from trusted news brands like the Guardian.”
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