Bankrate resumed publishing AI-generated financial articles that contained multiple factual errors despite claims of thorough human fact-checking, misleading readers with inaccurate information about home prices, salaries, and economic data.
Bankrate, a finance website owned by Red Ventures, resumed publishing AI-generated articles in June 2023 after previously pausing such content due to widespread criticism over factual errors and plagiarism. The company claimed these new articles were 'thoroughly edited and fact-checked by an editor' and generated using an 'in-house natural language generation platform using industry-standard databases.' However, an examination of a published article titled 'Best places to live in Colorado in 2023' revealed multiple significant factual errors. The AI incorrectly claimed Boulder's median home price was $1,075,000 when the actual figure from cited Redfin data was around $764,000 - an error of over $250,000. It also misreported Boulder's average salary as $79,649 instead of the correct $89,593, the unemployment rate as 3.1% instead of 2.5%, year-over-year worker growth as 5.3% instead of 0.6%, and the well-being score as 67.6 instead of 74. When confronted about these errors, Bankrate deleted the article and blamed outdated data rather than the AI system, despite having described their database as 'industry-standard' in the article's disclaimer.
Domain classification, causal taxonomy, severity scores, and national security assessments were LLM-classified and may contain errors.
AI systems that inadvertently generate or spread incorrect or deceptive information, which can lead to inaccurate beliefs in users and undermine their autonomy. Humans that make decisions based on false beliefs can experience physical, emotional or material harms
AI system
Due to a decision or action made by an AI system
Unintentional
Due to an unexpected outcome from pursuing a goal
Post-deployment
Occurring after the AI model has been trained and deployed
No population impact data reported.