<
https://pivot-to-ai.com/2025/11/05/ai-gets-45-of-news-wrong-but-readers-still-trust-it/>
"The BBC and the European Broadcasting Union have produced a large study of how
well AI chatbots handle summarising the news. In short: badly.
The researchers asked ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, and Perplexity about current
events. 45% of the chatbot answers had at least one major issue. 31% were
seriously wrong and 20% had major inaccuracies, from hallucinations or outdated
sources. This is across multiple languages and multiple countries.
The AI distortions are “significant and systemic in nature.”
Google Gemini was by far the worst. It would make up an authoritative-sounding
summary with completely fake and wrong references — much more than the other
chatbots. It also used a satire source as a news source. Pity Gemini’s been
forced into every Android phone, hey.
Chatbots fail most with current news stories that are moving fast. They’re also
really prone to making up quotes. Anything in quotes probably isn’t the words
the person actually said.
7% of news consumers ask a chatbot for their news, and that’s 15% of readers
under 25. And just over a third — though they don’t give the actual percentage
number — say they trust AI summaries, and about half of those under 35. People
pick convenience first."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
