AI Travel Recommendation

Ars Technica tells us Microsoft AI suggests food bank as a “cannot miss” tourist spot in Canada:

Late last week, MSN.com’s Microsoft Travel section posted an AI-generated article about the “cannot miss” attractions of Ottawa that includes the Ottawa Food Bank, a real charitable organization that feeds struggling families. In its recommendation text, Microsoft’s AI model wrote, “Consider going into it on an empty stomach.”

[…]

The article is credited to “Microsoft Travel,” and it is likely the product of a large language model (LLM),

The article was pulled now, but it has been archived.

The Verge has an update Microsoft pulls AI-written article telling tourists to visit the Ottawa Food Bank:

[…] but it pulled that version of the story after we published this article.

[…]

“This article has been removed and we are investigating how it made it through our review process,” Jeff Jones, a senior director at Microsoft, said in a statement to The Verge.

Well… No need to be an overpaid senior director at a trillion dollar company to understand how it passed through the review process. Hint: there is likely none:

Microsoft laid off journalists at Microsoft News and MSN in 2020 to replace them with artificial intelligence.

The technology is not ready, and using it as cost cutting measures really isn’t paying out for the quality.

The only flip side of the coin is that it cost so much money to run that it might be stopped, but then we have evidence of still unprofitable ventures so it’s not even a certainty.