Apple rolled out the feature not knowing it would embarrass the company and force a retreat — which is amazing when you consider that this happens to every other company that tries to automate genAI information delivery of any kind on a large scale. Microsoft Start’s travel section, for example, published an AI-generated guide for Ottawa that included the Ottawa Food Bank as a “tourist hotspot,” encouraging visitors to come on “an empty stomach.”
In September 2023, Microsoft’s news portal MSN ran an AI-generated obituary for former NBA player Brandon Hunter, who had passed away at the age of 42. The obituary headline called Hunter “useless at 42,” while the body of the text said that Hunter had “performed in 67 video games over two seasons.”
Microsoft’s news aggregator, MSN, attached an inappropriate AI-generated poll to a Guardianarticle about a woman’s death. The poll asked readers to guess the cause of death, offering options like murder, accident, or suicide.
