A story published by MSN revealed the perils of syndication, and just maybe, the problems with AI-generated articles.
MSN, which is the news aggregation site owned by Microsoft (MSFT) -), published an obituary for former NBA player Brandon Hunter, whose death was announced on Sept. 12.
However, the story was syndicated by MSN via a Portuguese news site called "Race Track" was titled "Brandon Hunter useless at 42," according to a report by Futurism.
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The distasteful headline was met with criticism, with some online speculating that the article was likely AI-generated, especially because Microsoft has reportedly already been using AI for its stories for years.
Critics pointed out that the now-deleted story's content did not make sense and was very disrespectful of a man who had just passed away.
The article's first paragraph referred to Hunter as an NBA "participant" who was "handed away on the age of 42."
Later on in the story, the article said he played in 67 "video games" in the NBA and recorded a career-high of "17 factors," the latter of which was referring to the 17 points.
The clear facts are that Hunter played 67 games in two seasons in the NBA from 2003 to 2005. He played with the Boston Celtics in his first year after being drafted 56th overall. He then played with the Orlando Magic is his second season
It's unclear how the MSN article came about. The publisher "Race Track" seems to be publishing other sports-related articles that also have incomprehensible headlines and odd content.
A spokesperson from Microsoft responded to TheStreet with this statement:
"The accuracy of the content we publish from our partners is important to us, and we continue to enhance our systems to identify and prevent inaccurate information from appearing on our channels. The story in question has been removed."
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