By Brian Niemietz
New York Daily News
BRIDGETON, N.J. — New Jersey’s Bridgeton Police Department is asking the public to ignore an inflammatory story about a Christmas Day shooting that never actually happened.
“This ‘article’ is circulating social media and was brought to BPD’s attention,” cops wrote on Facebook on Wednesday. “It is entirely false. Nothing even similar to this story occurred on or around Christmas, or even in recent memory for the area they described.”
The story in question was published by a site called News Break on Monday with the headline “Christmas Day Tragedy Strikes Bridgeton, New Jersey Amid Rising Gun Violence in Small Towns.”
The article details the killing of “a local resident” shot several times and even provides an exact location. It broached the controversial topic of gun control, too.
Police note the story has no byline and includes a notice that artificial intelligence tools were used to author the piece that “may contain errors.”
According to police, the story itself is an error.
“It seems this ‘news’ outlet’s AI writes fiction they have no problem publishing to readers,” Bridgeton cops added.
News Break hasn’t responded to a Daily News request for comment on allegations made by authorities in southern New Jersey. The company claims to have over 50 million users. NJ.com reported it was unable to track down prosecutors the seemingly fake article said were handling the case.
An uptick in AI-generated stories has led to the quick spread of disinformation. The website NewsGuard has so far tracked more than 600 publishers it identified as purveyors of AI-enabled disinformation.
Those outlets operate in 15 languages and have reportedly published hundreds of articles covering politics, entertainment, travel and technology by generating content with the use of bots. The number of websites sharing such information is reportedly up 1000% since May.
The New York Times announced Wednesday it was suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, alleging their programs used millions of articles published by the venerable newspaper and used them to “train automated chatbots that now compete with the news outlet as a source of reliable information.”
Neither OpenAI or Microsoft immediately replied to a request for comment. The tech companies have a partnership.
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