Gannett, the US media giant that also owns USA Today, has suspended the use of artificial intelligence to write articles after they were widely mocked on social media, Insider and CNN reported.

USA todayPhoto: Paul J. Richards / AFP / Profimedia Images

The media trust, which owns hundreds of American newspapers, has begun experimenting with using artificial intelligence to write articles in its regional editions about high school sports, whose teams are hugely popular in the United States.

But readers were able to quickly identify articles written by a tool called LedeAI, which also wrote bad article titles.

An article in the Columbus Dispatch newspaper described the game between the Westerville North and Westerville Central football teams as a “squad game.”

In another AI-written article, the team names weren’t even fully generated, with the AI ​​first noting that “The Worthington Christian [[WINNING_TEAM_MASCOT]]beat Westerville North [[LOSING_TEAM_MASCOT]]”.

The articles were widely mocked on social media for their repetitiveness, lack of key details, strange language and the fact that they sounded like they were written by a computer with no knowledge of the sport in question.

The Press Trust started using AI after laying off some of its journalists

The articles were changed after they went viral on social media platforms, and some of the Gannett-owned posts added deletions noting that “updates” were made to “correct coding, programming, or style errors.”

Insider notes that it found such articles in numerous local press publications, including the Des Moines Register, Arizona Republic, Florida Today and The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

“We have suspended the LedeAI high school sports experiment and will continue to evaluate providers, improving our processes to ensure that all news and information we provide meets the highest journalistic standards,” Gannett said in a statement.

CNN notes that the media trust began experimenting with AI after laying off 6 percent of its news division.

CNET, one of the most prominent tech and entertainment sites, also announced earlier this year that it had suspended the use of artificial intelligence for writing articles after being forced to make numerous corrections or even retract some articles that contained false facts. tail of information.

Like Gannett, CNET has been widely ridiculed on social media, but also heavily criticized for misinformation in its AI-generated articles.