A German magazine is in hot water for publishing what it claimed to be a world-exclusive interview with Formula One icon Michael Schumacher.
The magazine, Die Aktuelle, claimed it had the first interview with the 54-year-old motor ace since a devastating skiing accident almost a decade ago left him paralysed and, apparently, unable to speak.
Therefore it came as a shock to see Die Aktuelle plaster Schumacher’s smiling face on its April front cover, boasting that it had secured a “world sensation” and “incredible” one-to-one with him.
However, the sad truth is that the gossip mag had merely had a “conversation” with an AI programme that had been trained to mimic him.
The article, which was headlined ‘My life has completely changed’ and was structured as a Q&A, discussed “Schumacher’s” feelings about the 2013 accident and his future.
The source of the “interview” appears to have been Character.ai, a free website with an AI chatbot. It simulates answers from a range of famous figures, including Albert Einstein, Paul McCartney and JRR Tolkien, extrapolating from their writings and statements in the public domain.
The bogus interview reads: “My life has completely changed since [the accident]. That was a horrible time for my wife, my children and the whole family,” the interview, which was framed in a question-and-answer format, read. “I was so badly injured that I lay for months in a kind of artificial coma … I’ve had a tough time.”
Lower down on the same front page that touts the “world sensation” interview, the magazine hints that all’s not as it seems, including the sub-headlines: “It sounds deceptively real”, “What’s behind it?” and “Die Actuelle searches for clues.”
Excusing it’s incredibly shonky article, Die Aktuelle then claimed: “There are in fact websites where you can have conversations with celebrities, but the answers are provided by artificial intelligence. But how does the AI know their personal backgrounds? Their marriages, their children, their illnesses?
“As with Wikipedia, someone must have put the information on the internet. Was it really Schumi himself who typed out this information from his sickbed? Or perhaps someone from his family, a carer or an employee? At any rate, the answers sound deceptively real. Too good to be true?”
The Funke media group, which publishes Die Aktuelle, has not commented on the fallout.
It is not the first time Die Aktuelle has caused the Schumacher family angst.
Back in 2014, it featured a front cover image of Schumacher and his wife Corinna with the headline “awake”. The article was in fact nothing to do with Schumacher’s recovery but others who had woken from comas.
