DDB Melbourne and AI consultancy Pow Wow Solutions have developed the ‘Bullshit’o’Meter’ for Crikey, enabling users to polarise the news using AI to show just how frail the media landscape is in the rise of AI-generated writing.
Crikey collaborated with DDB Melbourne and Pow Wow Solutions to create a tool that harnesses the technology to show how AI can be used to mutate stories from straight reporting to sensationalism.
“We think AI-generated journalism is one of the most important and rapidly evolving stories going on at the moment. In addition to our coverage of the issue, we wanted to give readers the chance to understand how the technology works, and how easily it can distort the news. We’ve helped design the Bullshit’o’meter to teach news consumers to recognise the slop that’s being pumped out so they don’t fall victim to it. We’re using the power of AI, in a very small dose, to show readers how corrosive it can be,” said Crikey editor-in-chief, Sophie Black.
A recent study of the Australian public found that more than half (54 per cent) of respondents had no awareness or no understanding of the use of Generative AI in news reporting, while 90 per cent of respondents were somewhat, very, or extremely concerned about it.
Among those with strong concerns, 65 per cent called out for mandates on AI-modified articles, 62 per cent asked for more education to identify AI content, and 61 per cent sought greater awareness of the impact of AI reporting on the news. In addition, 53 per cent demanded to promote more independent, 100 per cent human-generated journalism.
“Everyone involved in this project understands the threat to journalism accelerated by GenAI, but we also believe in the technology’s capacity, in very small calculated doses, to educate people on how it can be used for the wrong purposes,” said Psembi Kinstan, DDB Group Melbourne executive creative director.
The Bullshit’o’Meter invites readers to select from a range of recent significant stories from the news story of the moment – for instance, the US election – and then uses AI – bespoke large language models built by Pow Wow Solutions to instantly polarise those stories. The Bullshit’o’Meter shows users just how easy it is for bad-faith news outlets to distort the truth and educates news consumers on how to spot and avoid AI-generated news in the future.
Stories are routinely being added to the Bullshit’o’Meter, allowing users to experiment with breaking news and polarise the election’s biggest stories with their own AI-powered newsroom.
“We trained an LLM to highlight instances of language that are (A) factual, or (B) representing commentary that is subject to bias or emotiveness. We then fine-tuned the LLM to mimic various personalities whilst rewriting this commentary by training models on articles from different media outlets that employ various levels of bias. Once the models had seen enough instances of relevant language, they could consistently mimic this style,” said Justin Beaconsfield, Pow Wow Solutions co-founder.
“Bullshit news is nothing new, but AI has the potential to turn this age-old problem into a modern-age monster. This issue is so big, it’s almost unbelievable. So we decided to put Australians behind the controls of the AI-powered news polarisation machine, so they can learn – and laugh – about just how dangerous this situation could become,” said Max Maclean, freelance creative director and AI technical consultant.
Credits:
Client: Crikey
Company: DDB Group Melbourne
Group executive creative director: Psembi Kinstan
Deputy executive creative director: Giles Watson
Head of copy and group creative partner: James Cowie
GM of Mango Melbourne: Alex Lefley
Head of Craft: Adam Hengstberger
Head of Production: Sonia McLaverty
Chief Strategy Officer: Matt Pearce
Creative Technologist: Andy Rovenko
CEO: Mike Napolitano
General Manager: Khia Croy
Freelance Creative Director: Max Maclean
Company: Pow Wow Solutions
Co-Founder: Ben Field
Co-Founder: Justin Beaconsfield
