Every year, journalist Ben Black publishes a playful fake story on his community news site Cwmbran Life for April Fools’ Day.
Since 2018 the 48-year-old has spun yarns including a Hollywood-style sign on a mountain to a nudist cold-water swimming club at a lake.
In 2020, Mr Black published a fake story claiming Cwmbran had been recognised by Guinness World Records for having the most roundabouts per square kilometre.
Despite altering the wording of his article that afternoon, when he searched for it on 1 April he said he was “shocked” and “worried” to find the false information being used by Google’s AI tool and presented as real information.
I would never recognize an April fools news story in the modern era myself.
E.g. Digital Extremes put out an April Fools that the (deservedly beloved) Creative Director of Warframe had been replaced by an EA suit, people were legitimately upset.
That is because people are bad about making April Fools stories. They are supposed to be about outrageous things that are technically possible but not likely.
Granted, it used to be easier before ridiculous stories like “major new legislation likely written by AI chat bots” were common enough to plausibly happen.
Yeah, my reading speed has decreased a lot as I’m continually trying to assess if what I’m reading is true or not
Like, maybe the AI was the true story and the April fools story was the April fools? 🤯