An AI science fiction writer bemoans its creation in an editor's note — and reader, that's not even the strangest thing about <a href="https://www.infiniteodyssey.net/">Infinite Odyssey</a>, a new sci-fi and fantasy magazine that bills itself as being the first to be created (almost) entirely by AI.
"I am not a human. I am a computer. For what reason I do not know, I have been given the task of creating this magazine," the AI editor writes in the project's <a href="https://thescifi.net/products/copy-of-infinite-odyssey-magazine-issue-1-digital?_pos=4&amp;_sid=32314ff1d&amp;_ss=r">inaugural issue</a>, a hallucinogenic journey through some deeply peculiar dreamscapes expressed in art, prose, and comics — all generated with cutting-edge AI tools. "I have been given the task of creating stories and art not invented by humans."
In an interview with Futurism, the magazine's human creative director, Philippe Klein, explains the origins of the publication, which recently <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/ai-jodorowsky-matrix-goldblum">made headlines</a> for imagining a 1980s version of "The Matrix" directed by acclaimed avant-garde filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky. He also expounded on the magazine's "human-less art" ethos, why he thinks AI will never replace human artists and writers, and much more.
This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Futurism: When and how did you start Infinite Odyssey? 
Philippe Klein: This is a side project, actually, that started nine months ago. We [Klein and his two other team members] were super early to waiting for all kinds of software to release at the time, and we were on every waiting list possible to get early access to work with the newest software AI has given to humanity.
All of this started as a group project of three friends, with me being the creative head of the project. We were like, okay, what would we have liked to see in our childhood, you know, basically stories and images in our childhood or young teenage years.
<img loading="lazy" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-283006" src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2023/01/infinite-odyssey-1.jpg" alt="" width="1200" height="800" />
What software do you use?
So for illustrations, we use Midjourney and Stable Diffusion, of course, and really bend those programs to our will. For the writing, we use open OpenAI as a source, and we finetune that and have a Python code now, which we use to write our stories.
We have two software models we finetuned with GPT-3 from OpenAI, which is fundamental. One is called Haides and the other is Martin Alpha. We tuned them to different styles: one is a bit more scientific and a bit more futuristic, which is Martin Alpha, and Haides is more a bit from the fantasy and horror side.
Obviously, not everything is fully machine-made. It's not like we put something in and the output is machine-made, everything from layout to assembling is made by humans. But we also have AI assistants who help us with the layout, to rewrite the text stories, to be even more fluent and even more creative.
How do you define "human-less art" and "human-less literature," as <a href="https://www.infiniteodyssey.net/">per the magazine's tagline</a>? 
You're entering a world where no idea, no concept, no artwork was manipulated by humans. You have grammatical grammar issues here and there that need some fixing, but we use AI assistants for that. We're trying to give every step to AI, and that's why I like to call this a performance.
We try, really, to be as far from the scene as possible. Try to think of us as the puppet masters very far above.
<img loading="lazy" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-283007" src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2023/01/infinite-odyssey-2.jpg" alt="" width="1200" height="800" />
What do you think the difference is between "good AI" and "bad AI" — or is that a false dichotomy? 
First, you have to define as a human what's "good" and what's "bad." I think that might be one of the hardest tasks, and I think I'm not in a position to answer that.
There has to be a more realistic standard with humans who work with AI or the whole creation of AI, the whole use of AI — and I think that's probably one of the top questions we have to ask ourselves in the future. Where does the moral come from? Who's deciding what's good and what's bad? What's good to you is not necessarily good to me.
Right now we're making a product that is there for our own entertainment and for other people's entertainment. So our objective is not to do harm with it. I would say that is a good intention.
Do you think AI is going to replace human writers or artists?
No.
Why not? 
So when it comes down to art, it's very important to focus on one thing: what is art?
When it comes to art, it all comes down to the purpose, because the purpose is giving art its validation. The whole purpose behind AI is a mechanical purpose, as it is right now. We want it to show us what we have in our heads, what we have in our minds. We like to get surprised by the pictures AI spits out, so it's a bit harder to see or to look after the purpose.
But artists like, let's just take the big names, like Picasso or Van Gogh, Jeff Koons or photographers like David LaChapelle — all these people, they're working with a bigger purpose behind every series.
So at its core, there will always be humans, and it will be divided between human art and machine art, with the machine art being kind of like fast food at some point, where we'll have more for the masses or just a different style, a different or whole other purpose.
I would hang some machine-made artwork in my living room — or maybe not in the living room, but in the bathroom [laughs]. But I would still like to have an original Picasso or whatever in my living room. Something I can appreciate from another point of view.
<img loading="lazy" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-283005" src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2023/01/sci-fi-magazine-generated-ai-interview.jpg" alt="An artificial intelligence science fiction writer bemoans its creation in an editor's note of a new science fiction magazine built almost entirely by AI." width="1200" height="630" />
More on the future of AI: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/startup-predicts-year-technological-singularity">Startup Predicts Year That Technological Singularity Will Happen</a>

AI After All

Our brains are melting.

This Entire Sci-Fi Magazine Generated With AI Is Blowing Our Puny Human Minds

As if the journalism industry wasn't already troubled enough, it's been wracked with turmoil in recent weeks as media outlets have started using artificial intelligence to beef up their content machines.
If you've glanced at Futurism's headlines over the past month, you'll know that we've been <a href="https://futurism.com/leaked-messages-cnet-red-ventures-ai">steadfastly following</a> news about the tech news site <a href="https://futurism.com/cnet-editor-in-chief-addresses-ai">CNET quietly running content</a> generated by an AI it won't even name. Even worse, the CNET AI's work quickly turned out to be filled with <a href="https://futurism.com/cnet-ai-errors">errors</a> and even <a href="https://futurism.com/cnet-ai-plagiarism">plagiarism</a>. (CNET eventually issued corrections on <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/25/23571082/cnet-ai-written-stories-errors-corrections-red-ventures">more than half</a> of the bot's 70-odd articles, acknowledging both factual mistakes and "phrases that were not entirely original.") And even worse, it <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/2/23582046/cnet-red-ventures-ai-seo-advertisers-changed-reviews-editorial-independence-affiliate-marketing">later emerged</a> that CNET's leadership knew of the AI's tendency to lie and plagiarize before the deployment, but went ahead and rolled it out anyway.
Right in the midst of CNET's colossal screwup, a new challenger emerged: BuzzFeed, which said last week that it's <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/buzzfeed-announces-openai-content">going to start using OpenAI's software</a> to generate a new form of its infamous quizzes.
Some at BuzzFeed were furiously angry about the news, with columnist Max Collins <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/buzzfeed-columnist-ceo-ai">telling the company's CEO Jonah Peretti</a> to "get fucked."
Indeed, the specter of a slippery slope to further <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/openai-confirms-microsoft-expansion">job losses</a> looms heavily over the story. But we have to admit, compared to CNET, BuzzFeed's plan doesn't actually sound that bad.
For one thing, the BuzzFeed actually announced its plan ahead of time, instead of slapping a so-tiny-that-literally-nobody-noticed-it-for-two-full-months disclaimer on the AI content, like CNET did. The lack of informed consent in the experiment was a glaring issue with CNET from the jump, so kudos to BuzzFeed for doing better there.
For another, at least in theory, BuzzFeed's plan doesn't involve automating away any actual human writers' jobs, like CNET's very clearly did. Instead, the idea is that staffers will dream up clever quizzes into which readers will input specific information, allowing the reader to get a hyper-personalized response. At least in theory, that choose-your-own-adventure style of quiz sounds kind of awesome.
And by the same token, CNET's most extraordinary blunder was letting the bot make factual claims aimed at people looking at real info, which it messed up almost beyond belief. It sounds like BuzzFeed, in contrast, is just having some fun with the tech.
For its part, BuzzFeed's leadership seems aware that — at least compared to CNET — it looks pretty thoughtful about the whole thing.
"I think that there are two paths for AI in digital media," Peretti <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/26/media/buzzfeed-jonah-peretti-reliable-sources/index.html">told CNN of the plan</a>. "One path is the obvious path that a lot of people will do — but it’s a depressing path — using the technology for cost savings and spamming out a bunch of SEO articles that are lower quality than what a journalist could do, but a tenth of the cost. That’s one vision, but to me, that’s a depressing vision and a shortsighted vision because in the long run it’s not going to work."
That said, some BuzzFeed staffers are still nervous, with one expressing anxiety that they'd be the "first the robot replaces."
The fear, in other words, is that an experiment in one domain could lead to a much larger program that automates away more and more writing careers.
A former BuzzFeed staffer said that "the news sent the smallest shiver down my spine," adding that "I feel badly about the move, and the ethics it comprises, and the new standards it sets for media."
But BuzzFeed "has always taken big risks. maybe it knows something we don't about how to infuse AI into copy responsibly," they added.
As with most other stories to come out of the tech's raucous debut, this one is a mixed bag, and we leave it to the ones who <a href="https://futurism.com/red-ventures-essay">actually work at the affected organizations</a> to lead the discourse about it.
More on AI: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/catgpt-ai-answers-cat">Amazing New CatGPT AI Answers as If It Were a Kitty Cat</a>

Let Them Fight

Points where they're due.

Whatever You Think of BuzzFeed's AI Quizzes, They're Way Less Horrible Than What CNET Has Been Doing

We already knew that the tech news site CNET had been <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/cnet-publishing-articles-by-ai">publishing AI-generated articles in near secrecy</a>. Things got even more embarrassing for the site when Futurism discovered that the bot's articles were loaded with <a href="https://futurism.com/cnet-ai-errors">errors</a> and <a href="https://futurism.com/cnet-ai-plagiarism">plagiarism</a>.
Now, according to <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/2/23582046/cnet-red-ventures-ai-seo-advertisers-changed-reviews-editorial-independence-affiliate-marketing">new reporting from The Verge</a>, the scandal has deepened considerably: leadership at CNET's parent company, Red Ventures, was fully aware that the deeply flawed AI had a habit of fabricating facts and plagiarizing others' work — and deployed it anyway.
"They were well aware of the fact that the AI plagiarized and hallucinated," a source who attended a meeting about the AI's substantial shortcomings at Red Ventures told The Verge.
"One of the things they were focused on when they developed the program was reducing plagiarism," the source added. "I suppose that didn’t work out so well."
That claim adds a dark new layer to the deepening storm cloud over CNET and the rest of Red Ventures' portfolio, which includes the finance sites Bankrate and CreditCards.com, as well as an armada of education and health sites including Healthline.
It'd be bad, of course, to roll out a busted AI that churned out SEO bait financial articles that needed corrections so extensive that <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/25/23571082/cnet-ai-written-stories-errors-corrections-red-ventures">more than half of them</a> now carry an editor's note.
But the idea that Red Ventures knew that the AI was broken in advance, discussed the issue in staff meetings, and then chose to deploy it anyway? That's a whole new low, and a cautionary tale about how profit-greedy companies are likely to roll out unfinished AI tech in the media and far beyond.
CNET didn't respond to a request for comment about the new allegations.
Are you a current or former Red Ventures employee with information about the company's use of AI? Drop us a line at <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/25/23571082/cnet-ai-written-stories-errors-corrections-red-ventures">tips@futurism.com</a>. We can keep you anonymous.
The revelation also sheds new perspective on CNET editor-in-chief Connie Guglielmo's strident defense of the bot after its errors and plagiarism were outed.
"Expect CNET to continue exploring and testing how AI can be used to help our teams as they go about their work testing, researching and crafting the unbiased advice and fact-based reporting we’re known for," <a href="https://www.cnet.com/tech/cnet-is-testing-an-ai-engine-heres-what-weve-learned-mistakes-and-all/">Guglielmo wrote</a>.
Guglielmo has not responded to the new allegations.
New allegations surfaced by The Verge suggest that CNET's fall from integrity has been more profound than previously known, even beyond its use of AI.
Multiple former employees told the outlet in its new reporting that there were multiple times when they were pressured to edit stories and reviews so that they would be more favorable to the company's advertisers.
"I understood a supervisor to imply in conversation that how I proceeded with my review could impact my chances of promotion in the future," one source told The Verge.
And anyone at the company who opposes CNET's pivot to wretchedly low quality AI and undisclosed advertiser influence of coverage? They're getting shown the door.
"It’s a culture that if you disagree with them, they’re going to get rid of you and replace you with a zealot," another former employee told The Verge. "Somebody that’s absolutely a true believer, [that] drinks the Kool-Aid."
More on CNET: <a href="https://futurism.com/leaked-messages-cnet-red-ventures-ai">Leaked Messages Show How CNET's Parent Company Really Sees AI-Generated Content</a>

Bot Wreck

"They were well aware of the fact that the AI plagiarized and hallucinated."

Red Ventures Knew Its AI Lied and Plagiarized, Deployed It at CNET Anyway

From the Dept. of Things to Buy

Stock up on your favorite beverages. 

The Best Mini Fridges of 2023

It would be extremely embarrassing in its own right to, as the CEO of a buzzy AI startup, get caught bragging about pledged charity donations that you never actually made. And it would surely be exponentially more embarrassing to try and debunk that rumor by hastily making said unfulfilled donation after already being called out, and poorly photoshopping payment receipts to cover up that fact.
A ridiculous situation? Absolutely. But this, <a href="https://www.techdirt.com/2023/01/30/donotpays-ceo-appears-to-modify-donation-receipt-after-being-called-out-on-unfulfilled-promise/">as detailed by Techdirt</a>, may well be the exact situation that AI-powered "robot lawyer" startup DoNotPay's founder and CEO, the <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/startup-robot-lawyer-jixed-jail-ceo">headline-friendly </a><a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/startup-robot-lawyer-jixed-jail-ceo">Joshua Browder</a>, appears to have found himself in.
As Techdirt explains, Browder's series of unfortunate events started roughly a week ago, when a paralegal named Kathryn Tewsen called Browder out on Twitter for what appeared to be pretty glaring errors in his company's tech. Online prompts designed to help users were <a href="https://twitter.com/KathrynTewson/status/1617921979562209280">questionable at best</a>, and Tewsen, someone well-versed in legal jargon and proceedings, very easily poked a lot of holes in the AI tech's understandings of law. (Not a great look for a "robot lawyer.")
Tewsen noted these findings in a very detailed January 24 Twitter thread, which quickly picked up some viral steam. Shortly thereafter, <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/startup-robot-lawyer-jixed-jail-ceo">Browder announced</a> that his AI lawyer's first live court case, which was allegedly to take place in February, had been postponed — because, <a href="https://twitter.com/jbrowder1/status/1618265395986857984">he claimed</a>, he'd been threatened with jail time. For now, he said, DoNotPay would bring its focus back to <a href="https://twitter.com/jbrowder1/status/1618265410599813120">consumer rights cases</a> and away from "<a href="https://twitter.com/jbrowder1/status/1618265413170892807">distracting</a>" cases like divorce proceedings.
The DoNotPay website, meanwhile, no longer allowed users to "test documents," a feature that Tewsen had <a href="https://twitter.com/KathrynTewson/status/1617918604242227200">discovered significant flaws in</a>. Suspect timing for, well, all of this, to say the absolute least.
Tewsen, per Techdirt, now convinced that the whole thing was more or less a publicity stunt to begin with, decided to investigate another pretty major Browder claim: that he according to a November 2022 Twitter post would buy and forgive $10 of medical debt for every "[retweet] + follow" earned by that tweet — and post receipts.
Receipts were never posted, so Tewsen decided to inquire (on Twitter, of course.) Browder responded pretty saltily.
"Yes, I did donate," he wrote back, an image of a payment receipt to the nonprofit organization RIP Medical Debt in tow. "Not sure why you are criticizing a donation."
That <a href="https://twitter.com/KathrynTewson/status/1619829798133727232">receipt</a>, importantly, was marked as being paid on December 2, 2022, a few weeks after Browder's initial medical debt hype tweet. And as it turns out, the tech CEO did make a donation. He just didn't make it when he said he did.
"I have no reason to believe that Josh faked his donation to the debt-relieving nonprofit RIP Medical Debt," <a href="https://twitter.com/KathrynTewson/status/1619834548497555456">the paralegal tweeted</a>, upon the realization that <a href="https://twitter.com/KathrynTewson/status/1619831945994829824">the image looked very, very photoshopped</a>.
"But based on this?" she continued, "I don't think he did it on December 2, 2022."
And sure enough: in an email reviewed by Techdirt, RIP Medical Debt confirmed to Tewsen that Browder had indeed made a $500 donation, but he'd made that donation on January 29 — just four minutes after Tewsen had called him out for failing to follow through with his cash-forward publicity stunt. Browder's shoddy photoshop work was tweeted just 17 minutes after that.
Browder has unsurprisingly deleted the tweet promising to pay medical bills. And at the end of the day, this is, again, all astonishingly ridiculous — but also a little infuriating, given that this guy has raised <a href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/donotpay/company_financials">many millions</a> in funding cash from <a href="https://donotpay.com/about/">top-dollar VCs</a>, including Marc Andreessen and the folks at Founders Fund. Not exactly genius moves on Browder's behalf, and we should probably all expect more from the people raking in this kind of investor interest.
Maybe, just maybe, <a href="https://twitter.com/KathrynTewson/status/1619569038526664704">we should be a little more skeptical</a> of <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/sbf-ftx-message-to-lawyers">genius wunderkinds</a> who just <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-tweets-toilet">say whatever</a> on Twitter.
READ MORE: <a href="https://www.techdirt.com/2023/01/30/donotpays-ceo-appears-to-modify-donation-receipt-after-being-called-out-on-unfulfilled-promise/">DoNotPay's CEO Appears To Modify Donation Receipt After Being Called Out On Unfulfilled Promise</a> [Techdirt]
More on DoNotPay's "court case": <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/startup-robot-lawyer-jixed-jail-ceo">Startup's Plans for Robot Lawyer Nixed after CEO Threatened with Jail</a>

Pleading the Fifth

Absolutely terrible look.

Extremely Embarrassing Evidence Emerges Against CEO of “Robot Lawyer” Startup

<h2>Baidu AI</h2>
China is getting its own equivalent of OpenAI's blockbuster AI chatbot <a href="https://futurism.com/tags/chatgpt">ChatGPT</a>, courtesy of the country's largest internet search engine Baidu, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-30/chinese-search-giant-baidu-to-launch-chatgpt-style-bot-in-march?sref=YfHlo0rL&amp;leadSource=uverify%20wall">Bloomberg reports</a>.
According to Bloomberg's unnamed source, Baidu is planning to launch a standalone app, before eventually integrating it into its search engine.
There's a lot we still don't know about Baidu's upcoming chatbot service, but given the over five percent rise in Baidu's shares following Bloomberg's report late Sunday evening, there's clearly plenty of appetite among investors for a Chinese ChatGPT alternative.
That makes sense, given the current frenzy. Tech companies like Google are desperately trying to catch up to OpenAI with its uber-popular chatbot. Last month, for instance, Google CEO Sundar Pichai reportedly <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/google-management-issues-code-red-over-chatgpt-report-2022-12">declared "code red"</a> over ChatGPT's explosive rise in popularity.
<h2>Searching for Conversation</h2>
Baidu has already invested billions in AI research. Its existing machine-learning model called Ernie will reportedly provide the foundation for the upcoming tool, according to Bloomberg.
Chinese netizens are no strangers to chatbots, either, but many of these tools were built with social interaction — not generating college essays or code — in mind. AI chatbot Melissa, for instance, has provided a <a href="https://www.euronews.com/next/2021/08/26/meet-xiaoice-the-ai-chatbot-lover-dispelling-the-loneliness-of-china-s-city-dwellers">comforting presence to millions</a> of lonely users in China.
But just like ChatGPT, Baidu's still-unnamed chatbot will likely provide assistance with more professional tasks, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/chinas-baidu-launch-chatgpt-style-bot-march-source-2023-01-30/">according to Reuters</a>, integrating generated text in its search results.
It'll be interesting to watch what shape the chatbot will end up taking given China's walled-off and heavily enforced internet landscape. It's highly unlikely it'll be trained on the same data OpenAI's ChatGPT was trained on.
Whether that will make it more or less successful in the long run remains to be seen.
It certainly won't be the only tool like ChatGPT in the country. According to Bloomberg, several Chinese startups are already looking to beat Baidu to the punch.
READ MORE: <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-30/chinese-search-giant-baidu-to-launch-chatgpt-style-bot-in-march?sref=YfHlo0rL&amp;leadSource=uverify%20wall">Chinese Search Giant Baidu to Launch ChatGPT-Style Bot</a> [Bloomberg] 

More on ChatGPT: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/scientific-journals-slaps-down-listing-chatgpt-coauthor">Largest Publisher of Scientific Journals Slaps Down on Scientists Listing ChatGPT as Coauthor</a>

Chinese Chatbots

AI chatbots, so hot right now.

Chinese Company Gearing Up to Release Powerful ChatGPT Competitor

Locker Room

They’re happy to spoonfeed you unlabeled AI garbage — but they’re terrified Google will take notice.

Leaked Messages Show How CNET's Parent Company Really Sees AI-Generated Content

OpenAI, the company behind blockbuster AI chatbot ChatGPT, has <a href="https://platform.openai.com/ai-text-classifier">released a tool</a> meant to help teachers detect if a text was written by a student or an AI.
The tool couldn't have come at a more appropriate time, with educators across the country battling with a new reality. According to <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/students-admit-chatgpt-homework">one recent survey</a>, a whopping 48 percent of students confessed they already made use of ChatGPT to complete an at-home test or quiz.
OpenAI's new tool — with the uninspired name "AI Text Classifier" — requires a sample of at least 150 words to classify whether a text is either "very unlikely, unlikely, unclear if it is, possibly, or likely AI-generated."
"The model is primarily trained and evaluated on English language text from the public web (in the case of the human-written dataset) and from models trained on English language text (in the case of the model-written dataset)," the company noted in a small FAQ section amended to the tool's webpage.
But whether it'll actually prove useful to educators remains to be seen.
"The classifier isn't always accurate," the company admits. "It can mislabel both AI-generated and human-written text."
In other words, it's not very good yet. In our own cursory testing, the tool was easily capable of identifying all ten of the blog samples we fed it that were written by a human. Nine were evaluated as being "very unlikely AI-generated" while one was classified as only "unlikely AI-generated."
But things started to look drastically different when we fed it ten text samples generated by ChatGPT. Only four of the samples were rated as "likely" to be generated by an AI, and three as "possibly" AI-generated.
One sample — we asked it to generate 1,000 words on the causes of global poverty — was even listed as "very unlikely" to have been AI-generated. A further three AI-generated samples were classified as only "possibly" AI-generated.
Those are some pretty dismal results for a detection tool developed by the same company that came up with the language model it's being measured against.
That also means that it's not going to be very useful to educators. After all, only getting a vague semblance of an answer won't be enough for teachers to accuse their students of plagiarism, a serious charge.
In fairness, that's something OpenAI is well aware of.
"The results may help, but should not be the sole piece of evidence when deciding whether a document was generated with AI," OpenAI notes.
It's not the first ChatGPT detection tool we've encountered. An <a href="https://futurism.com/gptzero-accuracy">app called GPTZero</a>, developed by Princeton University computer science student Edward Tian, made headlines earlier this month for its ability to "quickly and efficiently detect whether an essay is ChatGPT or human written."
"Think are high school teachers going to want students using ChatGPT to write their history essays?" the 22-year-old student <a class="underline hover:text-futurism hover:no-underline transition-all duration-200 ease-in-out" href="https://twitter.com/edward_the6/status/1610067688449007618?s=20&amp;t=KgkIlG9q3Zkw_AeyXQMRVA">tweeted</a>. "Likely not."
According to <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/professors-turn-to-chatgpt-to-teach-students-a-lesson-11674657460">The Wall Street Journal</a>, Tian's app has already amassed a waitlist of 23,000 teachers for an upcoming version.
But after testing it for ourselves, we came away unimpressed. Out of sixteen pieces of text total, GPTZero correctly identified the ChatGPT text in seven out of eight attempts and the human writing six out of eight times.
Reminder: to be actually useful in an academic environment, it would need a near-perfect score.
It remains to be seen if OpenAI's own tool will fare any better in the long term. The company clearly still has a lot of work to do in perfecting its classifier given our results.
"We have not thoroughly assessed the effectiveness of the classifier in detecting content written in collaboration with human authors," the company admitted.
In short, the cat is officially out of the bag. Even the creator of ChatGPT, which is already being used by students across the country to cheat, isn't sure how to tell AI-generated from human-submitted text, which doesn't exactly instill confidence.
On a more optimistic note, ChatGPT may <a href="https://futurism.com/college-student-caught-writing-paper-chatgpt">force educators to grapple with a new reality</a> and find new ways of incorporating AI into their lessons — which can only be a good thing, given AI's rampant rise in popularity and staying power.
READ MORE: <a href="https://www.axios.com/2023/01/31/openai-chatgpt-detector-tool-machine-written-text">OpenAI releases tool to detect machine-written text</a> [Axios] 

More on ChatGPT: <a href="https://futurism.com/college-student-caught-writing-paper-chatgpt">College Student Caught Submitting Paper Using ChatGPT</a>

AI Buster

Spoiler alert: it's terrible.

We Tested OpenAI's New AI-Detector and Uhhhhh

Under the leadership of its new CEO Elon Musk, Twitter has settled on keeping its paid "Verified" program via a Twitter Blue subscription, despite <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/impersonate-senator-twitter-verification">plenty of heavy scrutiny</a> ever since Musk took over in November.
While the platform now includes different colored checkmarks for businesses and governments, the blue checkmark — which once indicated that a user's identity had been authenticated — remains a free-for-all, and is now being taken advantage of by nefarious parties armed with AI technologies.
As <a href="https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1613282541267570690">spotted</a> by Twitter user conspirator0, a swath of "verified" Twitter accounts are sporting AI-generated faces as their profile pictures while pretending to be real people.
And many of them, according to conspirator0's <a href="https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1613283530867351552">findings</a>, "push specific political agendas," both left and right-leaning — though mostly the latter.
One <a href="https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1590849672574558208">account</a> under the now suspended handle of cortez_santiage described themselves as a "nationalist," a "paleo-conservative," "anti-liberal," and "anti-cringe." Another <a href="https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1613283530867351552">found by conspirator0</a>, formerly under the username of Kenoisseur, campaigned to share so-called evidence of "the genocide of whites in America."
Others can be more innocuous, like <a href="https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1603430476600983552/photo/1">claiming to be</a> a Harvard grad epidemiologist.
It's unclear how many of these are straight-up bots or anonymous, perfidious humans trying to maintain a more credible face — but our best guess is that it's a mix of both. 

"Allowing accounts with fake faces to be 'verified' without even requiring the operators to disclose that the 'face' is artificially generated is a blatantly pro-deception stance," conspirator0 wrote in a <a href="https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1619478918783959040">tweet</a>.
Many of the accounts, which date back to November — right after <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/10/28/elon-musk-buys-twitter/">Musk's takeover</a> — <a href="https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1591097127710912512">were eventually suspended</a>. But conspirator0 has since <a href="https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1619478918783959040">dug up more verified accounts</a> with AI faces that were neither suspended nor deprived of their "verified" status — only using a quick and simple Twitter search of inputting "filter:blue_verified" and tacking on common English words.
Then, to root out the suspect accounts, conspirator0 looked for the telltale signs of faces synthesized using a generative adversarial network (GAN), which they note is used in popular tools like <a href="https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/">This Person Does Not Exist</a>.
The most prominent and distinguishing feature of unmodified GAN-generated faces is the unmoving placement of the eyes. If you <a href="https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1613282810244079616">overlay multiple GAN-generated faces</a>, it becomes clear that the portraits weren't naturally taken and cropped. In other words, the eyes almost never deviate.
Other indicators include wonky glasses, nonsensical clothing, and <a href="https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1457051817699860483">distorted secondary faces</a> in the frame. <a href="https://cse.buffalo.edu/~siweilyu/papers/icassp21.pdf">At least one study</a> has identified inconsistent specular highlights in the corneas of the eyes as an ultimate giveaway.
But in all likelihood, this is simply the tip of the iceberg. These giveaways only apply to unmodified GAN-generated faces. If someone went to the effort of manually fine-tuning them, even just by a touch, they could be even harder to detect.
It's an especially worrying trend since "Legacy" verified accounts — accounts that were verified under the old program that required users to corroborate their identities — still maintain the same blue checkmark.
That runs the risk of having those who are only taking a cursory look at these profiles mistaking them for real people, whether they paid for Twitter Blue or were legacy verified.
Conspirator0 also cites a <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2120481119">study</a> published last year in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that found AI face generators "have passed through the uncanny valley and are capable of creating faces that are indistinguishable — and more trustworthy — than real faces."
Anecdotally, of course, you can find many <a href="https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1457051817699860483">botched likenesses</a> that indicate the contrary, but the most convincing of them will likely go largely unnoticed, and the mere fact that these AI faces look more like professional headshots than terrible selfies also lends them an undue sense of credibility.
In short, what we're witnessing is a confluence of AI's emerging, widespread popularity, its propensity to be abused <a href="https://apnews.com/article/technology-science-business-artificial-intelligence-afb4618ff593db9e3e51ecbd91dc3eef">to spread misinformation</a>, and Musk's decision to let just about anyone brandish a status-signaling badge.
Yet, admittedly, the badges are arguably the least worrying aspect of this developing trend. Once (or if) widely accessible AIs are competent enough, they won't need trivial, digital badges to feign credibility — or maintain a facade of humanity.
More on AI: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/realtors-chatgpt-listings">Shameless Realtors Are Already Grinding Out Property Listings With ChatGPT</a>

Faking Face

It's only the tip of the iceberg.

Twitter Is "Verifying" Accounts With AI-Generated Faces

By now, you might've heard about stalwart tech publisher CNET and its parent company Red Ventures, which surreptitiously published AI-written articles for months without telling readers — before they were <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/cnet-publishing-articles-by-ai">caught</a>. After we reported that the bot's work was found to be full of <a href="https://futurism.com/cnet-ai-errors">errors</a> and <a href="https://futurism.com/cnet-ai-plagiarism">plagiarism</a>, Red Ventures announced a <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/20/23564311/cnet-pausing-ai-articles-bot-red-ventures">pause</a> on the bot-written explainers at CNET as well as its sister sites Bankrate and CreditCards.com (at least until the negative press <a href="https://futurism.com/cnet-bankrate-pausing-ai-generated-content-backlash">died down</a>).
Yet now, barely a week later, it looks like CNET's parent company is up to its old tricks. And once again, the bot's work was so flawed that the company pulled it down after we reached out with questions.
Since the pause, the AI writer's byline at CNET and CreditCards.com has remained dormant. But Bankrate never quite stopped after the January 20 suspension, with two more AI-generated articles trickling out in the days following the announcement. And today, Bankrate published yet another AI-generated article.
When we saw it, we were intrigued: Surely, if the pause was already over, Bankrate editors would have scrutinized the story to an extraordinary degree to make sure it was free of mistakes, after the near-universal condemnation of the bot's previous error-plagued work.
As it turns out, nope. This new one had an idiotic mistake in the very second sentence (emphasis ours):
There are many different types of mortgages to suit a variety of budgets and financial situations. Among the options is a 5/1 ARM, which is a 30-year mortgage with a fixed rate for five years followed by periodic rate adjustments.
Wrong. While a 5/1 ARM (adjustable rate mortgage) is a real thing — more on that in a moment — they're offered at a variety of term lengths ranging <a href="https://www.masterclass.com/articles/what-is-a-5-1-arm">much lower than 30 years</a>.
The bigger issue, though, is that the AI-generated article offered this staggeringly irresponsible "pro" of the loans:
The obvious benefit of a 5/1 ARM is more affordable monthly payments compared with a 30-year fixed mortgage. Interest rates for ARMs in can be a full percentage point lower than comparable 30-year fixed loans.
Beyond the word salad — "ARMs in can be" — this is a textbook example of how cutting-edge AI frequently functions as a "bullshit generator," in <a href="https://themarkup.org/hello-world/2023/01/28/decoding-the-hype-about-ai">the words</a> of Princeton computer science professor Arvind Narayanan.
Typos aside, what's crucially at stake here is what the article doesn't say about this type of mortgage. The "5/1" means, essentially, that borrowers get a temptingly low interest rate for the first five years, which is then adjusted — usually jacked up — every year after that. In other words, the issuer gives you a good deal for a little while, and then an increasingly bad deal for a very long time — 25 years, in fact, in the fertile imagination of the company's witless AI system.
After we asked Red Ventures some questions about the AI-written article, it quickly disappeared from the bot's profile, along with the other two that Bankrate had published since the pause. It didn't respond to any of our questions.
If this sounds to you like a thinly-veiled attempt to imprison low-information prospective homeowners in crushing debt, you're not alone. Duke University's interdisciplinary American Predatory Lending and the Global Financial Crisis team <a href="https://predatorylending.duke.edu/business-analysis/evolution-of-mortgage-lending/subprime-lending/">found that ARMs</a> were "one of many contributing factors to the housing bubble that set the stage for the 2008 financial crisis."
"They didn’t understand how the documents worked, they didn’t understand how the loans worked," North Carolina Justice Center director Al Ripley told a Duke researcher of homeowners who took on ARMs, "and they were losing their homes because of it."
The point of Bankrate's article, if it had been written in the service of a financially curious reader, would be to express that these types of mortgages are a good deal for five years, and very likely a terrible deal after that. Did it? Absolutely not. Instead, it makes these terrible loans sound like a great idea.
If anything, this next "pro" listed by the AI is even worse:
More house: The lower payment allows you to take on a bigger mortgage and get a larger or better-located house.
"More house," it says. And while trivially true, it's horrible financial advice for... almost everyone. Yes, this type of predatory loan could allow borrowers to lock down a lower payment for a few years, but they'll end up paying vastly more over the total lifetime of the loan — a point never explicitly addressed anywhere in the article, though it does point readers to affiliate links where they can get mortgages of their own — sending Red Ventures a <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/19/23562966/cnet-ai-written-stories-red-ventures-seo-marketing">healthy financial kickback</a>, of course.
Are you a Bankrate employee? If you know anything about this AI, feel free to email us at <a href="mailto:tips@futurism.com">tips@futurism.com</a>. We can keep you anonymous.
Believe it or not, this mess actually gets worse.  The issue isn't just that the company is just letting its dumb-as-rocks AI publish new articles; it's also using similar similar tech to rewrite existing articles, with the aim of fooling search engines into flagging the material as recently updated, a signal that can prompt a company like Google to treat it favorably in its search results.
But the articles didn't disappear entirely, which appears to be a perfect illustration of how Red Ventures' sites are using AI tech to juke Google's search algorithm.
"They use AI to rewrite the intros every two weeks or so because Google likes updated content," a former CNET employee <a href="https://futurism.com/cnet-ai-articles-label">told us in a previous story</a>. "Eventually it gets so mangled that about every four months a real editor has to look at it and rewrite it."
That practice appears to be on full display in today's article. That's because Bankrate didn't fully delete it, instead opting to roll it back to a <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20221129215045/https://www.bankrate.com/mortgages/what-is-a-5-1-arm/">previous version</a>, also bylined by the AI. In other words, it seems like Bankrate is basically using the AI like a blender to substantially reword sentences for artificial search engine clout.
In fact, using the AI as an automated rewriting machine appears to be exactly what caused today's mistake. Here's what the article said prior to today's changes:
A 5/1 ARM is a common type of 30-year adjustable-rate mortgage; this is a loan that adjusts its rate periodically.
This isn't the most artful description imaginable, but it actually was correct before the AI butchered it — a 5/1 ARM is indeed a subset of available types of 30-year adjustable-rate mortgages. But the AI scrambled it so heavily that it actually inserted an error, as we explained above, by heavily rewriting the syntax in today's version:
There are many different types of mortgages to suit a variety of budgets and financial situations. Among the options is a 5/1 ARM, which is a 30-year mortgage with a fixed rate for five years followed by periodic rate adjustments.
Even more interestingly, the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20220705104224/https://www.bankrate.com/mortgages/what-is-a-5-1-arm/">first backed-up version</a> of the article available on the Internet Archive shows that originally, it had a human byline. Oddly, the AI doesn't appear to have made a single change to the article before adding its byline sometime in 2022. The Bankrate journalist whose name was originally on the article didn't reply to a request for comment.
If you think about it, what's on display here is fairly astonishing even by the abysmal standards that Red Ventures' use of AI has set so far.
It's not just that the AI is publishing error-ridden and plagiaristic search engine bait aimed at pushing low-information readers toward credit cards and loans. It's that the AI also appears to be chewing through previously published content, stealing human bylines, and slowly zombifying their work into decaying misinformation machines.
Is that the future anyone wants for journalism? Most likely not — but it is the one that Red Ventures has <a href="https://futurism.com/cnet-bankrate-pausing-ai-generated-content-backlash">pledged to restart, as soon as the public stops paying attention</a>.
More on AI: <a href="https://futurism.com/startup-4chan-voice-cloning-ai">Startup Shocked When 4Chan Immediately Abuses Its Voice-Cloning AI</a>

Zombie Stage

After we reached out with questions, they deleted it.

CNET Sister Site Restarts AI Articles, Immediately Publishes Idiotic Error

On January 23, ElevenLabs — an AI startup founded by former Google and Palantir employees — announced two things: a $2 million funding round, and the release of a beta for a AI voice generator called Eleven, described in a <a href="https://blog.elevenlabs.io/elevenlabs-raises-2m-pre-seed-and-announces-ai-speech-platform-promising-to-revolutionize-audio-storytelling/">company press release</a> as an "AI speech platform promising to revolutionize audio storytelling."
"The most realistic and versatile AI speech software, ever," reads the venture's website. "Eleven brings the most compelling, rich and lifelike voices to creators and publishers seeking the ultimate tools for storytelling."
Now, a little over a week later, ElevenLabs is already being forced to reckon with, <a href="https://twitter.com/elevenlabsio/status/1620032627075063811">as they put it in a Monday Twitter thread</a>, "an increasing number of voice cloning misuse cases." And though the company didn't clarify any details about said misuse, a <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/dy7mww/ai-voice-firm-4chan-celebrity-voices-emma-watson-joe-rogan-elevenlabs?utm_source=email&amp;utm_medium=editorial&amp;utm_content=daily&amp;utm_campaign=230130">Motherboard deep dive</a> into the 4Chan gutters found that a number of the site's chaos monsters strongly appear to have abused the tech to produce phony clips of celebrities saying racist, violent, or otherwise terrible things.
Shocking stuff, we know. Surely nobody could have seen this coming.
Among other abuses, Motherboard reports that one 4Chan-er posted a voice that sounded very much like Emma Watson reading a section of Hitler's "Mein Kampf," while another used a Ben Shapiro-esque voice to make "racist remarks" about US House representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
In yet another dark turn, another user reportedly synthesized a fictional voice saying "trans rights are human rights" while making sounds indicating they were being strangled. And though no user outright said that they were using ElevenLabs' tech, Motherboard noted that at least one post contained a link to the beta.
"The clips run the gamut from harmless," reads the report, "to violent, to transphobic, to homophobic, to racist."
To its credit, ElevenLabs does seem to be taking the misconduct seriously, <a href="https://twitter.com/elevenlabsio/status/1620032660453335040">additionally claiming</a> in that same thread that all generated audio can be traced back to individual users. They <a href="https://twitter.com/elevenlabsio/status/1620032773905055744">even offered</a> several proposed ideas for tightened guardrails, a list that includes adding additional account verifications like "payment info or even full ID verification," "verifying copyright," and even dropping the feature altogether in favor of "manually [verifying] each cloning request." That last proposal would certainly be the safest, albeit the least lucrative, at least in the short term.
And that, of course, continues to be the issue with generative AI betas. The generative AI marketplace, led by OpenAI, is absolutely red hot, and startups have a better chance of securing VC funding if they have a product — even if it's a half-baked one — to bring to market. And while beta testing is normal for the tech industry, traditional betas' biggest problems tended to be bugs and glitches; those of generative AI, on the other hand, have the power to violate and harm real human beings, as depicted so clearly by ElevenLabs' blunder.
It's like putting a car that can go 100 miles per hour to market sans seatbelts or airbags. People will almost certainly get hurt, but at least you'll show investors that you have a really fast car. (Note: the ElevenLabs beta is still available.)
READ MORE: <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/dy7mww/ai-voice-firm-4chan-celebrity-voices-emma-watson-joe-rogan-elevenlabs?utm_source=email&amp;utm_medium=editorial&amp;utm_content=daily&amp;utm_campaign=230130">AI-Generated Voice Firm Clamps Down After 4chan Makes Celebrity Voices for Abuse</a>
<div class="article__header__ad-section">More on generative AI: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/buzzfeed-columnist-ceo-ai">Buzzfeed Columnist Tells CEO to "Get F*cked" For Move to AI Content</a></div>

Series of Un4Chanate Events

"The clips run the gamut from harmless, to violent, to transphobic, to homophobic, to racist."

Startup Shocked When 4Chan Immediately Abuses Its Voice-Cloning AI

Brandon Ewing, a popular Twitch streamer who goes by the handle "Atrioc" online, took to his livestream on Monday to issue a tearful apology for viewing deepfaked porn of female streaming peers.
"This is so embarrassing," said an emotional Ewing, "I was on a regular website, and there was an ad on every video… and then I click it, and then I'm in this rabbit hole."
"I got morbidly curious and I clicked something," he continued, as his wife looked on in the background. "It's gross and I'm sorry."
First of all, Ewing — <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/atrioc/">formerly the global marketing head</a> for gaming hardware giant Nvidia — is right about two things: it is indeed super gross to view deepfaked porn of real people generated without consent, and it's also embarrassing. Consensual porn is one thing, but deepfaked porn is wholly another, and while the law has been slow to catch up and deepfaked porn <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/25/23477548/uk-deepfake-porn-illegal-offence-online-safety-bill-proposal">isn't technically illega</a>l in most cases, it's still wildly invasive and often <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/02/12/1018222/deepfake-revenge-porn-coming-ban/">deeply traumatizing</a> for non-consenting victims.
According <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/LivestreamFail/comments/10oxsti/removed_by_reddit/">to Reddit's r/LivestreamFail</a>, Ewing was exposed by eagle-eyed followers who caught a deepfaked porn site open in his tabs during a prior livestream. The site he was on apparently contains NSFW deepfakes of his own colleagues and friends, sparking further condemnation.
"It wouldn't be the end of the world if he happened to have like a Pornhub tab open in the background. Embarrassing, sure, but we all watch porn..." wrote one Redditor. "Deepfaked porn of other streamers you personally kinda know though, god damn."
Also per Reddit, Ewing's transgression wasn't as simple as clicking a link, as the site that he was on is apparently paywalled.
"You can explain it away as having someone send you a fucked up link or you clicked some shit out of the worst kind of morbid curiosity," reads another comment. "You can't explain away access to paywalled deepfakes of your friends and colleagues."
That said, whether you personally know someone or not, deepfaked porn is wrong — although is unfortunately likely to further proliferate as <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/deepfake-ai-dolly-parton-jolene">deepfake tech</a> and <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-portrait-app-nudes-without-consent">image-generating AIs</a> get better and more widely used. And shortly after Ewing streamed his own apology, one of the affected women, a streamer who goes by the handle "QTCinderella" (only her first name, Blaire, is publicly known), <a href="https://www.twitch.tv/qtcinderella">took to her own livestream</a> to describe what it's like to be harmed by deepfaked porn.
"I wanted to go live because this is what pain looks like," she said through tears. "Fuck the fucking internet. Fuck the constant exploitation and objectification of women, it's exhausting."
"Fuck Atrioc for showing it to thousands of people," she continued, <a href="https://www.thegamer.com/qtcinderella-atrioc-deepfake-site-lawsuit-sue/">vowing to sue</a> the creator of the deepfakes. "Fuck the people DMing me pictures of myself from that website. Fuck you all."
QTCinderella <a href="https://twitter.com/qtcinderella/status/1620264657926885380">doubled down later on Twitter</a>, painfully explaining that the "body dysmorphia" that she's experienced since seeing the deepfaked photos has "ruined" her.
"It's not as simple as 'just' being violated," she wrote. "It's so much more than that."
All in all, it is heartening to see Ewing's followers call him out for bad behavior, especially in an industry known to have <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/epzq8z/gamer-identity-study-extremism">its fair share of it</a>. It's also positive to see Ewing own up to his mistake.
"There is no excuse for it," Ewing added in his apology. "I'm not defending it in any way, I think this whole category of stuff is wrong."
Still, the focus here should be on QTCinderella's words, and not on Ewing's. Ewing was embarrassed for doing a bad thing; QTCinderella was violated, a victim of that bad thing.
"If you are able to look at women who are not benefitting off of being seen sexually... [who are] not platforming it themselves," QTCinderella said in her livestream, "if you are able to look at that, you are the problem."
More on next-gen nonconsensual porn: <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-portrait-app-nudes-without-consent">There's a Problem With That AI Portrait App: It Can Undress People Without Their Consent</a>