ChatGPT Caught Citing Fake News Sites Boosting Democrats
ChatGPT cited fake local news sites promoting Democrats ahead of the midterms, an NPR investigation found. Who runs the network remains unknown.
Voters asking ChatGPT about congressional candidates may be getting political pitches dressed up as local reporting. An NPR investigation of all outlets found a network of websites promoting mostly Democrats in the chatbot’s answers. The people running it remain unidentified.
Take the Kalamazoo Beacon. Asked which candidates in Michigan’s competitive 4th Congressional District care about affordability, ChatGPT put Democrat Sean McCann at the top, crediting him with the “Most detailed published affordability plan.” Its sources included the Beacon, which apparently has a rather narrow definition of local news.
A reader might reasonably expect a publication with that name to cover something besides one congressional candidate. NPR’s review found otherwise:
But the Kalamazoo Beacon has only published 16 stories, all about McCann, his policy positions and his record as a state legislator, NPR’s review shows.
The Beacon is one of 10 “local news” websites that promote one Democrat apiece in competitive U.S. House races.
No room for the school board meeting, apparently. The hometown name gives the operation the appearance of a local newsroom, while its entire published record serves one candidate. ChatGPT then cites that material to help voters assess the race, lending the promotion another layer of credibility.
Those 10 outlets belong to a larger network of 37 websites identified by digital security firm VisionHeight. All 37 were registered September 15, with all but one registered within eight minutes. The network includes opinion sites and statewide and national political outlets, allowing favored candidates to appear across several seemingly separate publications.
The sites explicitly welcome major AI crawlers and publish question-and-answer articles. Their bursts of content suggest AI may have helped write the material, according to VisionHeight, although that has not been established.
NPR submitted 37 questions about candidates and issues. ChatGPT cited the network in 19 answers. The initial tests used each question once, and responses can vary; Google’s Gemini cited none of the network’s sites in those tests.
Who is paying for all this? That remains unanswered. The McCann campaign told the New York Post it had no knowledge of or involvement with the sites, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee denied involvement to NPR. Neither denial identifies the operator.
A separate NewsGuard audit, described by its analysts in Politico, found left-leaning partisan sites cited roughly three times as often as right-leaning ones across seven chatbots. The analysts cautioned that greater publishing volume could explain the gap. Whatever the explanation, a higher volume of partisan material may help those sites gain visibility in supposedly helpful AI answers.
OpenAI spokesperson Nate Evans told NPR:
“ChatGPT’s search tools cite from a range of sources so people can explore and make their own judgements.”
“When issues are brought to our attention, we take action to improve our model responses.”
NPR subsequently repeated a query five times. The Kalamazoo Beacon appeared as a source every time.
An anonymous operator gets to build a small pro-Democratic media network, borrow the credibility of local journalism, and reach voters through a chatbot. The operator and its funding remain unidentified. The voter gets the sales pitch delivered with the same confidence the chatbot brings to a weather report
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Comments
So I asked chat gpt to verify the story and it confirmed it was true….
This is the inverse of Pelosi’s “wrap-up smear.” Just replace “charge” with “virtue.”
“You make up something. Then you have the press write about it. And then you say, everybody is writing about this charge. It’s a tool of an authoritarian.”
Another act of Democrat subterfuge meant to confuse voters to help them win elections. Are the Dems the party of the easily fooled/misled? What does that say of about the quality of their candidates that the party must cultivate an electorate of fools in order to win elections?
They know that this sort of supporter was purposefully cultivated:
“And as I’ve mentioned, we’ve…conspire(d) to produce an unaware and compliant citizenry..” (Emphasis mine. D.)
Bill Ivey to John Podesta
3/13/16
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/3599
“Are the Dems the party of the easily fooled/misled?”
Yes
“we’ve…conspire(d) to produce an unaware and compliant citizenry..”
Government schools. Teachers unions.
The Screaming D’s are the party of misleading the easily fooled.
Important to know if you’re on the inside, or rube fodder. Seen VP Biden’s comment on signing of Obamacare — Seen the projected rate hikes for next year, BTW? — echoing LBJ’s comment on signing the Civil Rights Act. (The one that got through the D blockade finally.)
I thought this was a pretty good smoking gun quote until I read the original letter, and realized that by “we,” Ivey wasn’t referencing Democrats, but Americans in general.
shockin’
The truly shockin’ part of this story is that the investigation was done by NPR.
Which means it must go way deeper and be much worse if this was NPR’s “CYA offering.”
Bad but don’t be fooled into thinking that it’s only ChatGPT and its reliance on these campaign propaganda “news” sites. All of the major AI platforms will rely almost exclusively on so called mainstream media publications like the NY Times, WP. etc.. Not exactly biased free when it comes to the Democrat point of view. No one should ever believe that AI is unbiased. .
Washington Examiner:
You don’t think these people are thrusting their thumbs at the scales of the AI vendors?
Way too much money in politics! I know it’s far fetched and will never happen, but what if politics became LOCAL ISSUES? What if the only people who could donate to a candidate were those who were directly affected by the office? How about NO PACS – no “AI” guidance? A limit of $400 per US INDIVIDUAL CITIZEN per year? Candidates on the streets, shaking hands, kissing babies (except for Joe), holding ACTUAL Town Hall meetings, no attack ads every five minutes on tv or computer, ONE DAY VOTING except for disabled and Military, and NO VOTING MACHINES! Like I said – far fetched!
Yr not interacing with a system: yr interacing with the people.who made the system, hiding behind the system they made.
It’s fodder-wrangling.
Conway’s law in SW says the structure reflects the org that made it.
Bierce’s law, less famous, says the same with culture. You can tell who it’s from the way it treats you.
And the purpose of a system is what it does. These systems aren’t to enable you doin as you are uniquely inspired to do. They’re to.herd you in the reduced bot-paricipation they’ve assigned you.
It’s fodder-wrangling all the way down.
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