Microsoft’s News Portal Published AI-Generated Obituary of NBA Player Called “Useless”

Microsoft Start, the new name of the company’s MSN.com news portal has been caught publishing an AI-written obituary with a shocking headline (via Futurism). In the article published on MSN.com, Brandon Hunter, a former NBA player who recently passed away at the age of 42 is portrayed as “useless,” and this is right in the headline: “Brandon Hunter useless at 42.”

The AI-generated article comes from a website named Race Track, which has since been taken down. If you’ve never heard of its website, it’s probably because the articles appear to be completely rubbish. Just take a look at the introductory sentence in that obituary, which can still be accessed on the Internet Archive.

“Former NBA participant Brandon Hunter, who beforehand performed for the Boston Celtics and Orlando Magic, has handed away on the age of 42, as introduced by Ohio males’s basketball coach Jeff Boals on Tuesday.”

How such a nonsensical article with such an insensitive headline ended up on Microsoft’s news portal is still a mystery. Anyway, it isn’t the first time that Microsoft embarrasses itself with poorly-written AI-generated content.

Last month, Microsoft published an AI-created travel guide suggesting people visit a food bank “on an empty stomach.” Outrage ensued and the article was quickly pulled, and at the time the company explained to The Verge that this article had been “generated through a combination of algorithmic techniques with human review, not a large language model or AI system.”

This latest blunder is a bit different as Microsoft didn’t create the article, it published it on its news portal without apparently any human doing some form of quality control. Unfortunately, Microsoft laid off its team of journalists on MSN.com back in 2020 to replace them with AI.

Microsoft is a big believer in AI technology and the company invested billions of dollars into OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT. While generative AI is often portrayed as the next big thing, an epic failure of this magnitude should be a serious wake-up call for Microsoft and other tech companies watching this space.