Interview with Schumacher, but it’s done by artificial intelligence. Scandal in Germany – Corriere.it

Storm in Germany for an interview with Michael Schumacher, which appeared in the German magazine Die Aktuelle
, published as authentic and presented on the cover as a world exclusive. Behind the answers of the former pilot to the tabloid tabloid, both on the ski accident of 2013 (My life completely changed), as on the career and future of children Mick and Gina, there is artificial intelligence.

In a footnote, the newspaper let it be understood that the content was the result of technology and not of a real conversation with the former Ferrari driver, so much so that links associated with the interview led directly to a site where plausible content is collected and phrases of famous people made with a machine learning process. The misleading promotion of the fake exclusivity immediately worried communication experts, such as the German analyst Boris Rosenkranz (Serious and previous case not to be underestimated). Nothing has been known about Schumacher’s health for almost ten years. His wife Corinna Betsch and the people closest to him, including children, never let any detail slip away, taking care of Michael in total confidentiality. Even colleagues and close friends were unable to visit him, very few exceptions, such as the former head of Scuderia Ferrari Jean Todt. In the light of a context like that of the German sample, Artificial Intelligence platforms can thus have very serious and controversial repercussions.

Schumacher’s answers on the cover of the magazine released on German newsstands on April 15 were created by a chatbot platform (which works exactly like the well-known ChatGpt) called Character.ai, but between the layout, title and format of the cover story, there is no ‘was nothing that made the reader understand it directly. A clearly deceptive content, say the most critical opinions, which have raised a burning controversy over the matter in Germany.

The case may end up in court

The magazine is not new to invented and lying stories also published in the past, but this is the first case in which fake news passes through an artificial intelligence platform. The newspaper thus risks criminal consequences, in fact, the small notes placed at the bottom of the page, nor the screenshots of the answers processed by the computer, could not be enough to avoid the court. In any case, if there really is a legal aftermath, the case could make school. These experiments have already been used for impossible interviews with long-dead characters: from Napoleon to Niki Lauda. But this is not the case. No one would believe that a chat with Ayrton Senna could be real. While with Schumacher they wanted to create deception on purpose, and for this reason the reactions were very harsh. Those of the British newspaper The Times for example or even that of German bermedien, who labels the experiment as too stupid to be true, also criticizing the tabloid’s final gloss, added only at the end of the fake interview: Was it really Schumacher who answered or an Artificial Intelligence platform? The answers look deceptively real! Too good to be true?. What was written on Die Aktuelle.

Other known cases

After all, the use of artificial intelligence in the working or artistic field does not only concern texts, but also photographs or even songs that end up at the top of the charts (such as the non-existent duet between Drake and The Weekend). On the one hand we remember all the images and videos of some time ago, which immediately went viral, which have seen Pope Francis as the protagonist in contexts that are difficult to associate with a Pontiff. In some cases Bergoglio appeared in the crowd at a concert, in others while wearing a white duvet, in still others he seemed to dance as if he were in a disco. Even more recently, the case of the latest edition of the Sony World Photography Awards. German Boris Eldagsen refused the prize in the Creativity category, admitting that the image was created by Artificial Intelligence, therefore not by his work. I can’t accept this recognition as my merit, said the artist. Another phenomenon resulting from these technologies is that of Deep Fake, equally dangerous, as in the case of Ukrainian President Zelenskywho in a video made by the AI ​​invited, in the first days of March 2022, their compatriots to surrender and accept the invasion of the Russian army without reacting.