A city in China ‘troubled’ because of a fake message written by ChatGPT

It all started on February 16, when the police force in Hangzhou, in eastern China’s Zhejiang province, suddenly faced a series of questions about rumors spreading on social networks. festival. The story revolves around a screenshot of an “announcement”, which states that from March 1, the whole city will end the current policy of traffic allocation, including regulations. restrict vehicles from driving on the road based on license plates.

The “Notice” not only lists three detailed reasons for the policy change, but it also says: “Although such a policy has reduced congestion to a certain extent after many years of implementation since since 2006, but it also causes inconvenience to the public.”

The news caused a stir in part because the city suspended the aforementioned traffic restrictions last December except for highways and said the restrictions would continue this February depending on traffic conditions. through at that time.

But despite the documents released earlier, on social networks, the fake message has spread rapidly. And it wasn’t long before the local media realized that the fake message was written by ChatGPT, which has become a global craze since its launch.

Zhejiang Radio on February 17 stated that the above screenshot came from a residential area. Specifically, a resident here asked ChatGPT to write a “news report” about canceling the policy of restricting travel. This person recorded the entire process and then shared a screenshot of the AI ​​chatbot’s feedback to a group of friends on WeChat. Since then, the photo has gone viral on social media.

“The city government did not announce changes to the policy at all,” the radio report stated, adding that the creator of the fake announcement apologized to everyone in the group, where which he shared the screenshot.

The incident, after being discovered, caused an even more uproar, when many people expressed concern about the ability of Ai chatbots. “It’s scary that it’s literally written by AI,” said one highly rated comment on the Weibo platform.

With its ability to generate convincing human-like responses, ChatGPT’s popularity has rapidly increased across China in the past weeks, even though the tool is technically unavailable for use in the country. This. However, many people have found a way to access the service, and some even find a way to use chatbots for their own benefit.

This cutting-edge technology and its growing applications are also causing concern among legal experts in China. They have warned that because it is based on huge data sets, it can become a powerful source of rumors and misinformation without a fact-checking mechanism. Authorities are also concerned about the lack of regulations to hold violators accountable.

“The content generated by AI technology is not always accurate and some expertise is required to determine if the information provided by ChatGPT is correct,” said Xie Lianjie, a lawyer specializing in the law. Internet in Beijing, share. He added that such tools can be trained and used to generate deceptive information or feed to phishing websites.

China’s internet regulators have vowed to increase vigilance against rumors and misinformation online by emphasizing finding the source of information. In 2022, the Cyberspace Administration of China handled 172 million cases related to the distribution of illegal and inappropriate information, 3.6% higher than the previous year.

Refer to SixthTone