Incident: Generated stories published with blank slots

Module 14 · Incident file · About 25 minutes

What happened

On 18 August 2023 The Columbus Dispatch, a Gannett newspaper in Ohio, began publishing high school sports reports written by software from a company called LedeAI (Maggie Harrison Dupré, "USA Today Owner Pauses AI Articles After Butchering Sports Coverage", Futurism, 29 August 2023). Futurism describes LedeAI as a startup that says its generative AI produces "lightning-fast" and "easy to read" sports content.

Readers found the reports quickly. One opened: "The Worthington Christian [[WINNING_TEAM_MASCOT]] defeated the Westerville North [[LOSING_TEAM_MASCOT]] 2-1 in an Ohio boys soccer game on Saturday." Others were mocked for repeating phrases such as "high school football action" and for a scoreboard that "was in hibernation" (CNN, "Gannett to pause AI experiment after botched high school sports articles", 30 August 2023, republished by WTOP on 31 August 2023).

CNN found similar LedeAI stories at the Louisville Courier Journal, AZ Central, Florida Today and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Gannett paused the experiment in every local market that used it; the pause was first reported by Axios. Several Dispatch stories were updated with the note: "This AI-generated story has been updated to correct errors in coding, programming or style." LedeAI's chief executive, Jay Allred, said the articles "included some errors, unwanted repetition and/or awkward phrasing" and that "There were legitimate problems with the reports we produced."

The cost was public: a national news story about a local paper, corrections, and a paused product. No source here reports a money figure, so this file gives none.