Reader's Opinion Piece Actually Written by AI... Even the Newspaper Was Deceived

Irish Times Incident in Ireland
Both the Article and Contributor Reported to Be False
Editor Apologizes, Saying "There Was a Gap in the Publication Process"

A public apology was issued by a newspaper after controversy arose over a reader's contribution published in the media being written by artificial intelligence (AI).

According to the British daily The Guardian on the 14th (local time), the Irish Times published a reader's contribution titled "Irish women's obsession with artificial tanning is problematic" on the 11th.

The AI verification site showed a 93.8% probability that the profile photo of Acosta Cortez was created by AI. [Image source=Twitter]

The contribution became the second most-read article in the Irish Times and was circulated across various media outlets.

However, from the afternoon of the 12th, posts began appearing on social networking services (SNS) questioning whether the author of the contribution was a real person.

The author was said to be Acosta Cortez, a 29-year-old healthcare worker living in North Dublin, but it turned out that he was not a real person.

Media professional Rosanna Cooney posted on her Twitter, "The author photo published in the Irish Times looks strange," along with the results of verification using an AI detection tool. According to her, there was over a 90% chance that the author photo was AI-generated.

As suspicions that the contribution was written by AI continued, the Irish Times deleted the article and issued an apology.

Editor Ruadhan McCormack said, "We regret that this incident has broken the trust between the Irish Times and its readers," and added, "The person we were in contact with was not who they claimed to be."

He also stated, "This incident revealed gaps in our publishing process," and "Like others, we will learn and adapt (to AI)."

Meanwhile, the person who created Acosta Cortez is known to be a university student residing in Ireland. In a conversation with The Guardian, he said, "I used GPT-4 to write about 80% of the article and DALL·E 2 to create the profile photo."

He also revealed, "I used keywords such as female, overweight, blue hair, business casual clothing, and a proud expression to create the image of a woke journalist."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.