Members of the subreddit r/wow have pulled a ‘gotcha’ on a gaming publication called The Portal, which is owned by ZLeague.
With the proliferation of AI-written content, it’s getting increasingly difficult to discern human-written stories from bot-written ones. AI-written stories pose serious risks, including spreading misinformation and disinformation that the AI might consider true.
To test the waters and see if AI bots are scraping the subreddit to find content to write on, members from r/wow decided to create a fake new upcoming feature for World of Warcraft called “Glorbo” (via Kotaku).
I’m so excited they finally introduced Glorbo!!!
by u/kaefer_kriegerin in wow
Glorbo is not a real upcoming feature, but members of the subreddit decided to talk about it as if it is in an excited tone that makes it seem like they’re looking forward to its release. The subreddit made up details about Glorbo’s origins, functions and developers, and even held fake AMAs with imaginary Blizzard employees.
A gaming content website, ‘The Portal,‘ owned by ZLeague, took the bait. It published a now-deleted article titled “World of Warcraft (WoW) Players Excited for Glorbo’s Introduction.”
The article discusses how players are excited about the new feature and how “the highly anticipated new feature has sparked a wave of positive sentiment among players that are eagerly awaiting its impact on the game.” While the article has been deleted, an archived version can be found here. It’s unclear if an unsuspecting human wrote the article or if an AI bot that scrapped the subreddit for content to write about. It’s likely the latter.
The article’s byline credits ‘LUCY REED’ as the author, though clicking on the name doesn’t lead to a bio or any socials.
Big props to the r/wow subreddit for planning out the scheme and watching it come to fruition.
Image credit: Blizzard Activision
Via: Kotaku
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