A false train accident prompts an arrest in the Asian country.
Chinese security forces they have arrested recently to a man in Gansu province, accusing him of using ChatGPT for the fake news writing. Apparently, the Chinese citizen would have created a network of false news on various web pages to make money through online traffic, but the play has not ended up going as planned. And it is that it has not taken long to use the most disruptive technology for unethical purposes, as is usual in the nature of the human being.
Despite ambiguous Chinese laws, this news sets a curious precedent in the field of AI
It has been the South China Morning Post media outlet that has published the police report pertaining to the arrest and from which the news has gone viral in the rest of the digital media. This seems to be the first arrest made with the new anti-AI laws in hand, which allow the Chinese authorities arrest to those people that they use artificial intelligence platforms for distribute untrue information.
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— Sviat Hnizdovskyi (@s_hnizdovskyi) May 9, 2023
The police discovered on April 25 several articles where described a train accident with victims mortals, although with different locations in each one of them. Curiosity began to reveal itself in alleged infringement when the content began to be published simultaneously in 20 accounts of a blogging platform owned by the well-known Baidu. The investigations ended up leading the authorities to a company operated by the arrestedsurnamed Hong, who ended admitting his guilt.
During his statement, it seems that Hong would have confessed to the police the use of ChatGPT for rewrite stories already published, in order to avoid duplicate content filters and generate news that could increase traffic on their web pages and, therefore, add more profit to their coffers. Before being removed, articles got 15,000 hits thanks to a story devised by the OpenAI AI, which has already been banned in China, albeit with a restriction that can be bypassed with a simple VPN connection.
This type of act, generating content with false news, added to the possible addition of public disorder that the new anti-AI law in China seems to include, could be a imprisonment for Hong up to 10 years. Of course, many authoritative voices assure that the new regulations are ambiguous What can be used by Chinese authorities like a Witch hunt in front of activist and people who do not think in a similar way to the government of the country. There is no shortage of alternatives to ChatGPT these days, but there is also no shortage of people who take advantage of a tool created with good intentions.