ChatGPT invents presidential pardon history and pundits fall for it
Ourtake
Citing the chatbot as your source is a bold choice when the chatbot is the thing being fact-checked.
What happened
ChatGPT generated false claims that US presidents Woodrow Wilson, George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter pardoned relatives, including a nonexistent brother-in-law. Media commentators, including a CNN commentator who cited ChatGPT as her source, repeated the claims, which The Verge's Elizabeth Lopatto debunked. A Columbia Tow Center study also found ChatGPT search misattributed many news citations.