Tuesday 14th February: British tabloids made ChatGPT racist

February 14, 2023

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🌶️Joe Shervell on LinkedIn: How The Sun made ChatGPT Racist | 122 comments

British Tabloids Made ChatGPT Racist. Can you guess which ones? Here's the story: Last year I attempted to build a chatbot whose entire knowledge-bank was… | 122 comments on LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/joe-shervell_how-the-sun-made-chatgpt-racist-activity-7029120296531951617-mMZf?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

This story is utterly, utterly depressing and utterly, utterly predictable.Web strategist Joe Shervell used ChatGPT to 'interview' a collection of British newspapers. He prompted the chatbot to create personas that represented people who 'only understood the world' through reading specific papers. He went on to ask ChatGPT to answer a series of five questions, first as it normally would and then as each of the personas. The bias displayed in the answers from the tabloid personas is truly terrifying.

Unfortunately certain publications turned ChatGPT into something between a drunk uncle and a paranoid, xenophobic lunatic.

Website strategist, Joe Shervell

Joe goes to some lengths to point out this is not a scientific study, but the bias displayed in the answers from the tabloid personas is truly terrifying. I don't know what's more frightening... that AI can replicate this kind of bias seamlessly or that it's out there day in day, day out in newspapers read by millions of people. Actually I do know... give me mindless robots over publishers exploiting the culture wars any day.

A publishing wishlist for 2023 | What’s New in Publishing | Digital Publishing News

I’m so happy that publishing’s prediction season is over. Don’t get me wrong, I love reading predictions. Making them? Not so much. It’s a thankless task. Life comes at you fast in the publishing game and I’m way better at saying what I would like to happen than what is going to happen. In that …

https://whatsnewinpublishing.com/a-publishing-wishlist-for-2023/

I wrote this for What's New In Publishing, safely separate from the annual predictions season. It's a list of the things that I hope happen in what’s already shaping up to be an interesting, if testing, 2023. Maybe predictably, my wishlist focuses on value, commercial sustainability and revenue diversification in all its wonderful forms. Oh, and if Elmo could just leave Twitter alone. A print resurgence would be nice too...

Game changer – Publisher Kevin Whitchurch talks about launching his new sports magazine, Pitch - FIPP

Publisher Kevin Whitchurch had the idea for his latest sports magazine while watching cricket on a glorious English summer’s day. “I was with my friends and our conversations ranged across all sports - football, rugby, Wimbledon, the Olympics. We were free-ranging without pausing to think this may not be of interest,” he recalls. “It was a general love of sport and of what’s going on and it got me thinking about a new multi-sport magazine.”

https://www.fipp.com/news/game-changer-publisher-kevin-whitchurch-talks-about-launching-his-new-sports-magazine-pitch/

Talking of print, this story from FIPP cheered me up. Pitch is a new print quarterly looking at issues in sports rather than scorelines - from the concussion debate in rugby union, to the rise of women’s sports or the human rights controversy that surrounded the Football World Cup in Qatar. Publisher Kevin Whitchurch says it’s a magazine that 'invites you to kick off your shoes and find a comfortable chair'. I'm in.

Here's what a $7M, 30-second Super Bowl ad can purchase in digital media in 2023

Let’s once again put that cost in perspective and take a look at what $7 million can afford a buyer elsewhere elsewhere in the media landscape.

https://digiday.com/marketing/what-a-7m-super-bowl-ad-buy-can-purchase-in-digital-media-in-2023

And speaking of sport, this story from Digiday shows what digital media exposure you could get for the $7 million you would need to buy a Superbowl ad. It lists the number of impressions you could expect to get from Netflix, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. It could also bag you up to between 280 ads in a range of US newspapers. Bargain!

On this week’s episode, we hear from Sarah Ebner, Executive Editor and Head of Newsletters at the Financial Times. She tells us about her role leading the newsletter team at the FT, and the value of newsletters in subscriber acquisition and retention but also as paid products in their own right.

In the news roundup we take a thorough look at what the integration of ChatGPT and Bard into search results means for news and magazine publishers. In the news in brief, the Mastodon Bump has levelled out, DC Thomson announces 300 job cuts, and we ask why subscription revenue is outperforming expectations.