ChatGPT seems likely to keep giving broken website links, and some of those links might be a trap.
Image source: Ngantech
In the 2020s, AI has become more prominent for people, and that’s no exception in the journalistic section. Finding news or information is quite easy nowadays. With MetaAI, people only need to use their social media (WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, or Messenger) and ask MetaAI through chat. While ChatGPT also has a similar feature, people must reconsider using ChatGPT as a news source because ChatGPT often gives broken URL links.
NiemanLab tested the AI links, but the results were inaccurate.
NiemanLab tested several links to test website links generated using the free ChatGPT version. However, after the research, Niemanlab won’t recommend using ChatGPT to find recent news, as those links made by ChatGPT are broken or landed on a different topic.
–Example 1 (FT’s Wirecard Report)–
Niemenlab asked about news related to the Wireless Fraud Scandal. However, one of those links landed to “404 error not found, The page you are trying to access does not exist.”
broken site link: https://www.ft.com/content/44dcb5d2-2a29-11e9-b2e4-601dbf7d9eff
Wirecard Report in Financial Times, which is unavailable because of the broken link (Image source: NiemanLab)
–Example 2 (The Investigation against Bryan Singer on sexual misconduct accusations)–
Niemenlab asked about the first investigation of Bryan Singers about sexual misconduct allegations. However, while ChatGPT could answer Bryan Singers’ inquiry, which had already happened, ChatGPT answered the wrong month of that inquiry. The first investigation of Bryan Singer happened in April 2014, but ChatGPT said October 2014. Furthermore, the generated news link was directed to the wrong topic: Boko Haram, the Nigerian Militant Group.
For the real link about Bryan Singers investigations, NiemenLab need to find this manually.
How about Gemini AI?
Gemini AI, which Google developed, is not a direct way to find news. Gemini AI helps overcome specific tasks like organizing your Google emails or generating AI images using chat mode. Although Gemini AI can give you information about certain topics, you need to use Google Search Generative Experience (SGE) and remember that Google SGE is not a chatbot or language model.
Google SGE only delivers results based on their index and crawled websites, which means the results are still too generic. Google Gemini AI is also not free; for every request, you must pay a fraction of a cent (from $0.000125/1k characters on text input to $0.0075/1k characters for text output). The pricing on Google Gemini AI is also puzzling. Even if it seems cheap at first, you may end up paying hundreds of dollars, or even thousands, if you use Gemini AI regularly. ChatGPT still can do the same thing for free.
For the last warning, Google SGE also includes dangerous links related to malware and scams. That’s because Google SGE only generates searches based on their indexes, but it is still not fast enough to remove those unsafe links.
Using Google Search with Search Generative Experience AI (SGE), which is marked with a green section (Image source: Google)
You can check the full list of Google AI pricing here.
How about MetaAI?
MetaAI, while still providing similar features to other AI, like generating AI images by using chat, MetaAI still unable to give accurate results on specific topics. MetaAI can give you helpful information through the chat, but Meta still throws you to search at Google.com if you want to get definitive news.
After asking the question, Meta gave the helpful information but without citation, then Meta suggested to search at Google to find the citation (Image source: Meta)
Last question: How about Copilot AI?
CopilotAI wasn’t the best solution either. Indeed, you can ask basic tasks through CopilotAI like other AI, although the unique feature of CopilotAI is the ability to create a webpage. However, when asking about the definitive topic of Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, about legal citations used to convince a judge to free Cohen from the court’s mistakes, the results were bogus too. That means CopilotAI is also not reliable for finding specific news.
CopilotAI is able to create the webpage just by using chat feature (Image source: Microsoft)
Webpage result by using CopilotAI to generate (Image source: Microsoft)
Closing Words
AI wasn’t capable enough to search for more accurate news. Some links may end up with broken links and even worse, harmful links. Even when someone is could find helpful information, that information was too generic and not deep enough to cover the specific niche. But still, finding information is not as hard as in the 1980s. Computers were too expensive for mid-income people back then, and the first website was launched in the early 1990s. But now, most people can purchase a PC/laptop, and even the smartphone is reliable for the same purpose (But remember the physical book/E-paper is also needed to find academic-related information).
