Reddit Baits AI-Driven Website Into Posting Fake News

A Reddit user posted fake “World of Warcraft” news and was able to get an AI-driven website to publish it as fact.

The Redditor’s deliberate attempt to get an AI-driven news site to read the post and publish its content succeeded when Z League’s zleague.gg, a site with AI-scribed content, reported on the fake news.

It appears Z League caught wind of the prank and deleted the fake-news-fueled article in question, but a web-archived version of it persists. As for what the misinformation was, the original Reddit post can be found here.

In short, a Redditor expressed enthusiasm at the “news” of fan-favorite Blizzard character Glorbo finally coming to “World of Warcraft.” The issue is Glorbo doesn’t exist. It isn’t a real entity and is most certainly not a fan-favorite character (at least, not before the Reddit post’s creation).

Despite the fact that Glorbo was a blatant meme, as evidenced by the Reddit post explicitly stating its goal to bait an AI bot site, Z League’s zleague.gg covered the news as though it was legitimate, diligently reporting on Redditors’ reactions to the news of Glorbo’s impending arrival in “World of Warcraft.”

The site reported that while there was excitement from some commenters, others were worried about Glorbo’s power levels relative to other characters and how such strength would unbalance the game.

Z League didn’t immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment.

Glorbo’s not the only instance of an AI-written article threatening a site’s credibility. Gizmodo’s io9 recently had an AI-scribed “Star Wars” article make headlines for sporting glaring errors a human editor would likely have caught with ease. The piece went up without vetting, sparking outrage from the site’s deputy editor who said the editorial team wasn’t given a voice in the matter and that higher-ups foisted the AI creation on them.

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