The Irish Times has removed an opinion article about fake tanning based on suspicions of an artificial intelligence (AI) hoax.
Last week, the newspaper published an opinion piece with the headline, “Irish women’s obsession with fake tan is problematic”. The article reached second place in the paper’s most read pieces but was taken down the following day with an initial message saying it had “been removed pending checks”.
On Sunday, the paper released a statement apologising and explaining the situation, with the editor, Ruadhán Mac Cormaic saying they had fallen victim to “a deliberate and coordinated deception” and that “the incident has highlighted a gap in our pre-publication procedures”.
Mac Cormiac said the 24/7 news operation had published the opinion column “written by someone purporting to be a young immigrant woman in Ireland” and that the piece “made an argument that has been aired in other countries but related it to the Irish context”.
“Over the course of several days, the author engaged with the relevant editorial desk – taking suggestions for edits on board, offering personal anecdotes and supplying links to relevant research,” said Mac Cormiac. “All of this was taken in good faith, and the article was published online on Thursday morning.”
“Less than 24 hours after publication on our digital platforms, The Irish Times became aware that the column may not have been genuine. That prompted us to remove it from the site and to initiate a review, which is ongoing.”
“It now appears that the article and the accompanying byline photo may have been produced, at least in part, using generative AI technology. It was a hoax; the person we were corresponding with was not who they claimed to be.”
“We don’t take this lightly. It was a breach of the trust between The Irish Times and its readers, and we are genuinely sorry.”
While the article’s text has been removed from the Irish Times’ site as of May 12, the page still remains with the original title and a brief corrections statement from the paper.
The article’s content had accused Irish women who use fake tan of mocking those with naturally dark skin, and the contributor byline had been under the name of Adriana Acosta-Cortez, who was described as a 29-year-old Ecuadorian health worker who lived in north Dublin.
A day later, however, a twitter account under the same name posted a message criticising the Irish Times for running the piece.
https://t.co/UHYCk0lHOe@IrishTimes genuinely sad that a once respectable news source has degraded themselves with such divisive tripe in order to generate clicks and traffic for their website. You need a better screening process than a believable gmail address #buyapaper 🤡
gg— Adriana Acosta-Cortez (@ecuadorian_adri) May 12, 2023
The Guardian reports that the person behind the twitter account reached out to them via direct message to identify themselves as an Irish, non-binary college student. They said they used GPT-4 to create about 80 per cent of the article and the image generator Dallas- E2 to create a profile picture of a “woke” journalist.
The person made it clear that they weren’t happy with the Irish Times’ apology saying it sidestepped the decision to publish “an incendiary article with an extreme leftwing viewpoint”.