AI-Generated Travel Guide from Microsoft Suggested Food Bank Stop on an “Empty Stomach”

Microsoft’s MSN.com news portal website is usually not recommended if you’re not into tabloid news and other sensationalistic content, but the company’s use of artificial intelligence to publish some stories has led to a pretty epic fail. Yesterday, the company quietly pulled an AI-generated travel guide for the Canadian city of Ottawa, which suggested tourists make a stop at the Ottawa Food Bank.

A Canadian technology writer shared the clumsily-written article on X/Twitter yesterday (via The Verge), and put the emphasis on the most insensitive sentence from this article, which Microsoft has now pulled (emphasis mine): People who come to us have jobs and families to support, as well as expenses to pay. Life is already difficult enough. Consider going into it on an empty stomach.”

Microsoft is really hitting it out of the park with its AI-generated travel stories! If you visit Ottawa, it highly recommends the Ottawa Food Bank and provides a great tip for tourists: “Consider going into it on an empty stomach.” https://t.co/7bvGemDad2

— Paris Marx (@parismarx) August 17, 2023

Yikes. Looking at the Ottowa Food Bank’s website, it looks like Microsoft’s AI made a poor reinterpretation of a sentence that’s on the homepage of the website: “People who come to us have families and jobs to keep with bills to pay. Life is challenging enough. Imagine facing it on an empty stomach.”

If you’re curious, a full screenshot of the article written by “Microsoft Travel” is still available. It lists the Ottawa Food Bank as the #3 recommendation, right after the Winterlude Festival and the city’s National War Memorial. Speaking with The Verge, Jeff Jones, a senior director at Microsoft, said in a statement that “This article has been removed and we are investigating how it made it through our review process.”

It certainly doesn’t help that Microsoft laid off journalists working at Microsoft News back in 2020 when the company started to experiment with AI to replace human editors. Microsoft has made a big bet on AI this year and said that it was “committed to the advancement of AI driven by ethical principles.” Obviously, the company still has some work to do on that front.