AI Just Got Pranked Into A Mistake No Human Would've Fallen For
The "World of Warcraft" community has just trolled a shady content-farm gaming website that was scraping forum posts using AI and turning them into articles. In doing so, the gaming community also exposed how extremely stupid AI bots can act when deployed without checks, even though there's legitimate concern that AI poses tangible risks to job security.
It all started with a post on the "World of Warcraft" sub-Reddit (r/wow), where users spotted a website named Z League that was posting machine-generated articles under "The Portal" brand, which looked eerily similar to community member discussions. To confirm if the website was indeed pulling the trick, a user (u/kaefer_kriegerin) shared an imaginary "World of Warcraft"-related post, titled "I'm so excited they finally introduced Glorbo!!!"
Unsurprisingly, an article titled "World of Warcraft (WoW) Players Excited for Glorbo's Introduction" appeared on Z League on the same day under the byline "Lucy Redd." When the gaffe started trending on social media, the website quickly added "Satire" at the end of the title, and also adjusted the description. "World of Warcraft (WoW) players create satire around the introduction of Glorbo and its impact on the game," said the updated version.
did they edit on (satire) to the end of the title, change the subtitle, and nothing else lmao pic.twitter.com/R7LVG2Itbn
— Silver 🏳️⚧️ (@SilverAndro) July 20, 2023
But that was not the end of the story. After updating the story and classifying it as a satire post, Z League once again fell to its AI scraping flaws. Soon after the original article vanished, there was another story up on the website that described the Reddit conversation around "Glorbo" by paraphrasing the comments.
A fun trolling for a serious issue
As news of the Z League fiasco started trending on social media, the second post was pulled from Z League as well. A quick look at the website reveals some suspicious bylines such as "Breakfast_ Burritos," "Ursine Warrior," and "Operehtor," a dead giveaway that it's not a legitimate outlet for any kind of content.
Z League is yet to post any update regarding the debacle, and its "World of Warcraft" section is still missing from the website. While the "World of Warcraft" community on Reddit had some fun exposing a shady scraper website, and even jokingly requested to turn "Glorbo" into a real character, Activision Blizzard employees also joined in on the online trolling.
👀 They found out about Glorbo https://t.co/KcODRw3gXP
— Lulu Cheng Meservey (@lulumeservey) July 21, 2023
Kyle Hartline, a senior game producer on the "World of Warcraft" team, tweeted in jest that they were excited to discuss "Glorbo." Lulu Cheng Meservey, CCO and EVP of Corporate Affairs at Activision Blizzard, shared on Twitter about the community finally unearthing the secret of "Glorbo." While providing an entertaining moment for "WoW" fans, this won't be the first AI gaffe of its kind.
Tech news outlet CNET recently published several finance-related articles generated using an AI tool, but they contained a lot of inaccuracies. Gizmodo also used an AI to write "Stars Wars" content, but the article even got the film chronology wrong. At the same time, the likes of Insider and The New York Times have reportedly told employees about experimenting with AI writing tools.