Microsoft accused of undermining Guardian's reputation over AI-generated survey

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The Guardian newspaper criticised Microsoft for publishing an artificial intelligence-generated poll about the possible causes of the girl's death alongside an article about her death.

Here's What We Know

The Guardian article reported on the death of 21-year-old athlete Lily James. Next to the article appeared an automatic poll from Microsoft, which asked about the causes of the girl's death and offered options "murder", "accident" or "suicide".

This angered readers and caused reputational damage to the publication, according to Guardian management. The survey was removed, but criticism in the comments remained.

The head of the Guardian demanded from Microsoft guarantees that it will not apply experimental AI technologies to the publication's materials without authorisation. She also called on the company to be more transparent about its use of AI.

A Microsoft spokesperson apologised, saying the poll should not have appeared alongside the article. The company has disabled automatic polls for all news stories and is investigating the incident.

According to the Guardian, the case shows the importance of a copyright system to control the use of journalistic material.

Source: The Guardian