RFT posts, then deletes, a potential AI-generated article. Here’s why this matters

ST. LOUIS – A fake crack from an alternative news paper that was thought to be dead left many people in St. Louis crying.

For years, articles from the Riverfront Times drew interest, outrage and laughter. But people especially noticed when an article was posted out of nowhere a month after an unidentified entity bought the periodical and then fired its entire staff.

Many accused the article of being written by artificial intelligence.

Previous coverage: The Riverfront Times was sold, the paper’s editorial staff was laid off

The article reported on Missouri Governor Mike Parson’s decision to deny clemency to death row inmate David Hosier. Several nuances of the story caught the attention of journalists in the region, including:

• The dry, personalityless nature of the article writing
• The author of the article, Ryan Smith, never wrote an article for the website prior to this story and had no social media affiliation with personal or professional accounts
• The story was posted days after the news first broke, and a day after the state executed Hosier

“You can judge for yourself, but using ChatGPT to produce fake news about MO pols competing in ladder matches, that looks like AI,” the Public Radio official said of the article on X, formerly known as Twitter. of St. Louis, Jason Rosenbaum. .

Rosenbaum previously posted on X that the only joy he got from AI was asking ChatGPT to write fictional stories about all eight Missouri Secretary of State candidates competing in professional wrestling matches.

RFT deleted the article two days after the backlash was raised. A screenshot of the article can be seen here:

5 You ran the article through multiple free AI detectors, including ZeroGPT, Copyleaks, Merlin, Leap, and Undetectable AI. Each of the checkers reported that there was a 100% chance that the article was written by AI and had 0% human input.

To double-check our work, we reached out to Webster University communications instructor and media literacy expert Julie Smith, who specializes in media education and combating disinformation. Smith ran the article through three other AI detectors, WinstonAI, GPTZero and ContentAtScale, each of which reached the same conclusion: the text was generated by AI with a 100% probability.

“I usually don’t have faith [AI Detection Tools] 100%, but if they all say the same thing, it gives them some credit,” Smith said.

5 Yours truly attempted to contact the Riverfront Times for confirmation of the article’s AI author, but each email to the publication’s Contact Us section and Smith’s RFT email were returned.

It’s unclear whether RFT will rely on AI for future articles, but Smith said readers should be skeptical of articles they suspect were written by AI, especially during an election year.

“AI-generated stories can say anything and people will believe it because we scroll so quickly through pages without friction – very few people will stop to see if something is AI-generated (especially if they like the story), Smith said. “Journalists have standards, editors and put their names on the story. They’re also trained.”

Smith shared numerous tips on how to spot AI-generated stories, including:

• Look for emotionless writing with no personality
• Click on the journalist’s name and see if they have other stories or are on social media. If a photo is attached to the reporter’s bio, run it through TinEye or Google Reverse Image Search to see what other sites are using that photo
• Do “side reading” by checking other sources to see if anyone else is reporting on this story

Readers may also question how the message is designed to get their attention, what information is left out of the reporting, and who benefits or benefits from the article.

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