AI chatbots like to invent things. The Facebook group Meta had this experience with a politically sensitive topic such as the assassination of Donald Trump.
An AI chatbot that denied the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump has left the Facebook group Meta in a difficult position to explain. Meta refers to so-called “hallucinations” in which software with artificial intelligence simply invents things. The industry has not yet found a fundamental solution to the problem.
When asked about the Trump assassination, the machine lies
Meta had to justify itself after criticism from the political camp of Trump supporters. It was denounced that the chatbot Meta AI first refused to answer questions about the assassination attempt on the former president – and then partly claimed that it had never happened.
The company explained in a blog post that it had initially intentionally not allowed Meta AI to talk about the July 13 attack, because headline-grabbing events are often accompanied by contradictory information and unfounded speculation, including conspiracy theories.
Meta: “Unfortunate”, but not intentional
But even after the AI chatbot had been fed information about the assassination, it claimed “in a few cases” that it had not happened, Meta admitted. That was “unfortunate” but not intentional.
The “hallucinations” are a common problem with AI chatbots and have to do with how the software works. The programs are first trained with huge amounts of information. When responding to user requests, they then use this information to weigh up word by word how a sentence should probably continue.
This means that the software can throw together completely false statements, even if it has only been trained with correct information. AI developers are trying to get the problem under control by adding additional guard rails to the programs.
Fact check label on the wrong photo
In a second issue, a photo of Trump with his bodyguards immediately after the assassination was incorrectly labeled with a fact-checking label. This had originally been used to mark a doctored version of the image that added smiles to the bodyguards’ faces. But Meta’s automated systems had a hard time telling the difference between the two photos – and they added the fact-checking label to the original photo as well.
In the assassination attempt, a man shot at Trump during a campaign rally in the state of Pennsylvania. The bullets killed one spectator and wounded two others. The former president was hit in the ear.
