PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Philadelphia Sheriff Rochelle Bilal is taking heat for headlines on her campaign website that her staff said were generated by artificial intelligence and never really appeared in any news outlet.
The headlines have been removed but an archived version of the website shows more than 30 made-up headlines attributed to local news organizations, mixed in with a few links to Sheriff’s Office press releases. The bogus headlines included three from KYW Newsradio.
It’s not clear when the headlines were posted or how long they were public. Bilal won re-election to a new four-year term in November, so it’s unlikely the site is getting much traffic.
A statement from the campaign says an outside contractor used ChatGPT to generate the headlines, feeding it prompts about Bilal’s initiatives. ChatGPT uses prompts to generate text but is unable to verify its own accuracy, a flaw well-known to those who use the technology.
The campaign says it removed the headlines because Bilal “continues to stand on integrity.” In an emailed statement, the campaign said, “Everything on the website, other than the news references, is accurate.”