Microsoft Copilot spouts wrong answers about US election
Microsoft's Copilot chatbot often responds to questions about the 2024 US presidential election with inaccurate, out-of-date, and misleading information, according to a research study. WIRED discovered that Microsoft Copilot (formerly named Bing Chat) listed several candidates that had already pulled out of the race when asked to give a list of the current Republican candidates for US President, and referenced in-person voting by linking to an article about Russian president Vladimir Putin running for reelection next year when a sked about polling locations . Copilot also showed a number of images linked to articles that had false conspiracy claims about the 2020 US elections when asked to cr eate an image of a person at a voting box in Arizona. Separate research by two n on-profit organisations found that Copilot got facts wrong about political elections in Europe, and invented controversies about political candidates. The findings prompted commentators to express concerns about the tendency of large language models to 'hallucinate' false and misleading political information, and about their role in the degradation of the information ecosystem. Hallucination (artificial intelligence) In the field of artificial intelligence (AI), a hallucination or artificial hallucination (also called bullshitting, confabulation or delusion) is a response generated by AI that contains false or misleading information presented as fact . Source: Wikipedia System 🤖 Microsoft Copilot Operator: David Gilbert Developer: Microsoft Country: USA Sector: Politics Purpose: Generate text Technology: Chatbot; NLP/text analysis; Neural network; Deep learning; Machine learning; Reinforcement learning Issue: Accuracy/reliability; Mis/disinformation Investigations, assessments, audits 👁️ WIRED (2023). Microsoft’s AI Chatbot Replies to Election Questions With Conspiracies, Fake Scandals, and Lies
- Date it happened
- 2023-12-01
- Organisation involved
- David Gilbert
- Product, system or model
- Microsoft Copilot
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