Artificial intelligence issued fake information about a Ukrainian writer, published by a popular TV channel

According to fact-checkers from Detector Media, on April 3, a post dedicated to the 105th anniversary of the birth of Ukrainian writer Oles Honchar appeared on the Instagram account of Novy Kanal. The text referred to «little-known facts» about his life, but followers discovered that the information was false.

The first to notice the error was the author of a blog about Kyiv, photographer Oleksiy Yekymenko. Later, Novyy confirmed the use of ChatGPT to create the post and apologized for spreading falsehoods.

In particular, the authors wrote that the writer was born in the city of Sosnytsia in Chernihiv region, but according to his official biography, Honchar was born in the village of Lomivka in Dnipropetrovs’k region.

ChatGPT further claimed that Honchar was the head of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group and participated in Plast meetings in the 1960s. However, this is impossible, because during the Soviet era, the organization’s activities were suspended and it mostly operated abroad. It was only in the late 1980s that Plast returned to Ukraine. «He was a doctor of art history and a professor at Kyiv University. And his works were translated into 8 languages,» theNew Channel post said.Once again, this turned out to be untrue — Honchar was a member of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, and his works can be read in 67 languages.

The Ukrainian Instagram community reacted strongly to the «updated» biography of the writer:
«Could you please provide a link to the research on 'Gonchar, a prisoner of war in the United States' and information about his arrest for 'propaganda of Stalinism'? And in detail how this affected the novel The Cathedral? Because it seems that only you know these facts,» readers asked.

As Oleksiy Yekymenko noted in his posts, this is not the first time that the New Channel has spread false facts about Ukrainian figures. For example, on Taras Shevchenko’s birthday, the media outlet reported that the poet was one of the first Ukrainians to take photographs. The post was later removed.

The TV channel’s SMM team responded to the audience’s outrage and wrote a post-justification:
«The latest technologies came into our reality faster than we expected. That’s why GPT chat has become a real lifesaver for many people.
…Yesterday I told you the facts from Oles Honchar’s life and thought that GPT and I had a match. But as they say: trust but verify, especially if it’s artificial intelligence. I apologize for misleading you with this post and thank those who reacted and pointed out this false information. …I reaffirm the idea that nothing can replace a human being. Information should be checked, and only reliable sources should be trusted!»

Given that the free version of ChatGPT in Ukraine still uses information that was relevant until 2021 (despite OpenAI’s announcement of new plugins for the chatbot), AI is still not suitable for in-depth fact-checking of Ukrainian contexts. Nevertheless, chatbots are already used in recruiting. One of the most popular job search sites in Ukraine, Robota.ua, has added ChatGPT to its platform. This way, they hope to help employers find candidates easier.