An obituary headline that appears to be the product of artificial intelligence referred to former NBA player Brandon Hunter as “useless.”
The 42-year-old power forward died unexpectedly on Tuesday in Orlando, Fla., where he played during the 2004-2005 season. Prior to that, Hunter spent a year with the Boston Celtics.
“Brandon Hunter useless at 42,” read the headline of the MSN story, which had been scrubbed from the outlet’s newsfeed by Thursday afternoon.
While that summary seems callous enough, tech site Futurism notes the obituary was rife with even more absurdities, like the claim that the 6-foot-7 baller “performed in 67 video games over two seasons and achieved a career-high of 17 factors in a recreation in opposition to the Milwaukee Bucks in 2004.”
MSN’s parent company, Microsoft, is a backer for ChatGPT maker OpenAI and, as Futurism reports, has previously experienced gaffes tied to artificial intelligence programs. In December, MSN cut loose a team of human journalists who were responsible for monitoring content generated by AI.
MSN’s obit is credited to an apparent sports site called Race Track, which has also produced stories titled “7 Causes to Strive Golfing as a Scholar” and “Former Participant Makes a Huge Prediction about Eagles, Vikings Sport.”
The latter article — which reads like a really poor translation from a different language — is about former Giants wide receiver Plaxico Burress making a prediction for Thursday night’s matchup between the Philadelphia Eagles and Minnesota Vikings.
In response to the Daily News’ request for comment, Microsoft said, “The accuracy of the content we publish from our partners is important to us, and we continue to enhance our systems to identify and prevent inaccurate information from appearing on our channels. The story in question has been removed.”
