Google and Microsoft’s chatbots are already citing one another in a misinformation shitshow Google and Microsoft’s chatbots are already citing one another in a misinformation shitshow icrosoft’s Bing said Google’s Bard had been shut down after it misread a story citing a tweet sourced from a joke. It’s not a good sign for the future of online misinformation. Google and Microsoft’s chatbots are already citing one another in a misinformation shitshow Microsoft’s Bing said Google’s Bard had been shut down after it misread a story citing a tweet sourced from a joke. It’s not a good sign for the future of online misinformation. <https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/22/23651564/google-microsoft-bard-bing-chatb...> If you don’t believe the rushed launch of AI chatbots by Big Tech has an extremely strong chance of degrading the web’s information ecosystem, consider the following: Right now,* if you ask Microsoft’s Bing chatbot if Google’s Bard chatbot has been shut down, it says yes, citing as evidence a news article<https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/google-bard-says-its-already-be...> that discusses a tweet<https://twitter.com/juanbuis/status/1638289186351456257?s=20> in which a user asked Bard when it would be shut down and Bard said it already had, itself citing a comment<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35246669> from Hacker News in which someone joked about this happening, and someone else used ChatGPT to write fake news coverage about the event. (*I say “right now” because in the time between starting and finishing writing this story, Bing changed its answer and now correctly replies that Bard is still live. You can interpret this as showing that these systems are, at least, fixable or that they are so infinitely malleable that it’s impossible to even consistently report their mistakes.) [...]