--- title: "ChatGPT Is Absolutely Butchering Reporting From Its “News Partners”" description: "A review found that OpenAI's \"ChatGPT search\" is routinely mangling reporting from news outlets, including OpenAI-partnered publications." date: "2024-12-02" modified: "2024-12-02" authors: - name: "Maggie Harrison Dupré" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/mharrison" url: "https://futurism.com/chatgpt-butchering-reporting-news-partners" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "OpenAI" tags: - "ai journalism" - "ai search" - "chatgpt" - "OpenAI" --- # ChatGPT Is Absolutely Butchering Reporting From Its “News Partners” ![A review found that OpenAI's "ChatGPT search" is routinely mangling reporting from news outlets, including OpenAI-partnered publications.]() *\Image: Getty / Futurism\* A review by Columbia's Tow Center for Digital Journalism found that OpenAI's [ChatGPT search]() — a [newer version]() of OpenAI's flagship chatbot designed to paraphrase web queries and provide links to proper sources — is routinely mangling reporting from news outlets, including OpenAI "[news partners]()" that have signed content licensing deals with the AI industry leader. According [to the *Columbia Journalism Review*](), the Tow Center's [findings]() analyzed "two hundred quotes from twenty publications and asked ChatGPT to identify the sources of each quote." The chatbot's accuracy was mixed, with some responses providing entirely accurate attributions, others providing entirely incorrect attribution details, and others offering a blend of fact and fiction. ChatGPT's search function operates via web crawlers, which return information from around the web as bottled into AI-paraphrased outputs. Some publications, for example *The New York Times —* which last year [sued OpenAI and Microsoft]() for copyright violations — have blocked OpenAI's web crawlers from rooting around their websites entirely by way of their robots.txt pages. Others, including OpenAI news partners that have signed [licensing deals]() [to]() [give]() [the AI company]() [access]() [to]() their valuable troves of journalistic material in exchange for cash, [allow OpenAI's web crawlers]() to dig through their sites. Per the *CJR*, the Tow Center found that in cases where ChatGPT couldn't locate the correct source for a quote due to robots.txt restrictions, it would frequently resort to fabricating source material — as opposed to informing the chatbot user that it couldn't find the quote or that it was blocked from retrieving it. More than a third of all ChatGPT replies returned during the review reportedly contained this type of error. But no one was spared — not even publications that allow ChatGPT's web crawlers to sift through their sites. According to the review, ChatGPT frequently returned either fully incorrect or partially incorrect attributions for stories penned by journalists at OpenAI-partnered institutions. The same was true for publications not subject to OpenAI licensing deals, but that don't block the AI's crawlers. It's a terrible look for the AI-powered search feature, which OpenAI billed in a blog post last month as a tool that provides "fast, timely answers with links to relevant web sources," and has received praise from prominent media leaders for its purported potential to benefit journalists and news consumers. "As AI reshapes the media landscape, Axel Springer's partnership with OpenAI opens up tremendous opportunities for innovative advancements," Mathias Sanchez, an executive at the [OpenAI-partnered publisher]() Axel Springer, said in an October statement. "Together, we're driving new business models that ensure journalism remains both trustworthy and profitable." (According to the Tow Center's review, ChatGPT search frequently returned entirely inaccurate answers when asked to find direct quotes from the Axel Springer-owned publication *Politico*.) According to the *CJR*, the investigators also found that ChatGPT sometimes returned plagiarized news content in cases where the bot's crawlers were blocked by a publisher. We [reported on the same phenomenon back in August](), when we found that ChatGPT was frequently citing plagiarized versions of original *NYT* reporting published by *DNyuz*, [a notorious Armenian content mill](). The review further showed that ChatGPT search's ability to provide correct attributions for the *same query* is wildly unpredictable, with the bot often returning alternately inaccurate and accurate sourcing when given the same prompt multiple times. A spokesperson for OpenAI admonished the Tow Center's "atypical" testing method, adding that "we support publishers and creators by helping 250M weekly ChatGPT users discover quality content through summaries, quotes, clear links, and attribution." "We've collaborated with partners to improve in-line citation accuracy and respect publisher preferences, including enabling how they appear in search by managing OAI-SearchBot in their robots.txt," the spokesperson added. "We'll keep enhancing search results." The media industry is still largely powered by click-based ad revenue, meaning that the Tow Center's findings could be concerning on a business level. If ChatGPT continues to get things wrong, are licensing deals and subscriptions lucrative enough to make up for the loss in traffic? And zooming out, there's the issue of what machine-mangled inaccuracy does to the complicated, [much-untrusted]() news and information landscape: should generative AI become internet users' primary method of finding and metabolizing news, can the public rely on web-surfing tools like ChatGPT search not to muddy the information landscape at large? That remains to be seen. But in the meantime, a word to the wise: if you're using ChatGPT search, you might want to triple-check that you know where its information is coming from. **More on ChatGPT attributions:** [*Amid New York Times Lawsuit, ChatGPT Is Citing Plagiarized Versions of NYT Articles on an Armenian Content Mill*]() ## Author At Futurism, I've reported extensively on the rise of AI as a cultural and business force shaping the media industry, and more broadly how those dynamics are changing how we all consume and share information and relate to one another. I'm also fascinated by public health policy and ethics, the role of emerging tech in politics and governance — and the powerful people and forces at those intersections — climate change, and the environment. My investigation on Sports Illustrated's use of AI-generated authors with fictional biographies won a 2024 Mirror Award for "Best Story on Media Coverage of Artificial Intelligence in Journalism and the Media" from Syracuse University's SI Newhouse School, I contributed to Niemen Lab's 2025 Predictions for Journalism series, and I've discussed my work for Futurism during appearances on NPR, CNN, the BBC, the CBC, and more. I grew up in rural Pennsylvania and attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where I played Division I field hockey for the Minutewomen as a midfielder. Since then, I've lived in New Orleans, Louisiana and Manhattan, New York. I spend my free time running, reading, perusing archival fashion, and searching for the world’s best negroni. I also have a debonair tuxedo cat, Westley, who's named after "The Princess Bride." ### Author social links [Bluesky]()