Technology

Popular among locals

In its recommendation text, Microsoft's AI model wrote, "Consider going into it on an empty stomach."

Starving for fun? Then stop by the local food bank! A must see tourist spot.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Here's what you shouldn't miss!," (archive here) the article extols the virtues of the Canadian city and recommends attending the Winterlude festival (which only takes place in February), visiting an Ottawa Senators game, and skating in "The World's Largest Naturallyfrozen Ice Rink" (sic).

3 destination on the list, Microsoft Travel suggests visiting the Ottawa Food Bank, likely drawn from a summary found online but capped with an unfortunate turn of phrase.

That last line is an example of the kind of empty platitude (or embarrassing mistaken summary) one can easily find in AI-generated writing, inserted thoughtlessly because the AI model behind the article cannot understand the context of what it is doing.

Microsoft partner OpenAI made waves with LLMs called GPT-3 in 2020 and GPT-4 in 2023, both of which can imitate human writing styles but have frequently been used for unsuitable tasks, according to critics.

First noticed by tech author Paris Marx on Bluesky, the post on the Ottawa Food Bank began to gain traction on social media late Thursday.

In response to Marx's post, frequent LLM critic Emily Bender noted, "I can't find anything on that page that marks it overtly as AI-generated.

I'm a bot and I'm open source!

I assume the AI thought it was an ALDIs

r/funny

Keep it, then tell them to bring a bag of canned food.