DDB Group Melbourne and Pow Wow Solutions show how easily AI can mutate the news with launch of the Crikey Election Bullshit’o’Meter

DDB Melbourne and experimental AI consultancy Pow Wow Solutions have developed a unique tool, the ‘Bullshit’o’Meter’, for Crikey that enables users to polarise the news using AI and accelerate the ‘bullshit-ification’ of the global media landscape.

As a fiercely independent Australian news organisation, Crikey has been closely covering developments in artificial intelligence. When it comes to the media, given misinformation and ‘fake news’ are already endemic, the outlet believes AI-generated journalism has the potential to make the situation infinitely worse.

Crikey’s position on this is simple: “AI powered journalism stinks. Large language models (LLMs) produce ‘bullshit’ – not our word – ‘bullshit’ is the technical, scientific, term – when it frequently and confidently tells lies. Even when AI tells the truth, its answers have in-built biases.”

A recent study* of the Australian public found that more than half (54%) of respondents had no awareness or no understanding of the use of Generative AI in news reporting, while 90% of respondents were somewhat, very or extremely concerned about it.

Among those with strong concerns, 65% called out for mandates on AI modified articles, 62% asked for more education to identify AI content, and 61% sought greater awareness of the impact of AI reporting on the news. In addition, 53% demanded to promote more independent, 100% human-generated journalism – just like Crikey.

That’s why Crikey has collaborated with DDB Melbourne and Pow Wow Solutions to create a powerful tool which harnesses the technology to show how AI can be used to mutate stories from straight reporting to sensationalist slop.

The Bullshit’o’Meter invites readers to select from a range of recent significant stories from the news story of the moment – the US election – then uses AI – bespoke large language models built by Pow Wow Solutions to instantly polarise those stories. The Bullshit’o’Meter shows users just how easy it is for bad faith news outlets to distort the truth and educates news consumers on how to spot and avoid AI-generated slop in the future.

Stories are routinely being added to the Bullshit’o’Meter, allowing users to experiment with breaking news and polarise the election’s biggest stories with their own AI powered newsroom. You can read all about it in Crikey’s editorial here.

Says Sophie Black, editor-in-chief, Crikey:  “We think AI generated journalism is one of the most important and rapidly evolving stories going on at the moment. In addition to our coverage of the issue, we wanted to give readers the chance to really understand how the technology works, and how easily it can distort the news. We’ve helped design the Bullshit’o’meter to teach news consumers to recognise the slop that’s being pumped out so they don’t fall victim to it. We’re using the power of AI, in a very small dose, to show readers how corrosive it can be.”

Says Psembi Kinstan, executive creative director, DDB Group Melbourne: “Everyone involved in this project understands the threat to journalism accelerated by GenAI, but we also believe in the technology’s capacity, in very small calculated doses, to educate people on how it can be used for the wrong purposes.”

Justin Beaconsfield, co-founder, Pow Wow Solutions described the tool and says: “We trained an LLM to highlight instances of language that are (A) factual, or (B) representing commentary that is subject to bias or emotiveness. We then fine-tuned the LLM to mimic various personalities whilst rewriting this commentary by training models on articles from different media outlets that employ various levels of bias. Once the models had seen enough instances of relevant language, they could consistently mimic this style.”

Max Maclean, freelance creative director and AI technical consultant, who partnered on the project and oversaw the LLMs, said:  “Bullshit news is nothing new, but AI has the potential to turn this age-old problem into a modern-age monster. This issue is so big, it’s almost unbelievable. So we decided to put Australians behind the controls of the AI-powered news polarisation machine, so they can learn  – and laugh – about just how dangerous this situation could become.”

All articles created using the Bullshit’o’Meter are not able to be copied or pulled off the Crikey platform, ensuring that the polarised AI stories cannot take on a life of their own. Visit the Bullshit’O’Meter at https://bullshitometer.news/

The tool is being promoted through an editorial on Crikey.com and a range of activity across the Crikey network.

Source: * Commissioned DDB study into awareness and attitudes towards Generative AI, conducted with 417 Australians. National online quantitative study conducted on the Ideally platform on Wednesday 23rd October.

Client: Crikey
Company: DDB Group Melbourne
Group Executive Creative Director: Psembi Kinstan
Deputy Executive Creative Director: Giles Watson
Head of Copy and Group Creative Partner: James Cowie
GM of Mango Melbourne: Alex Lefley
Head of Craft: Adam Hengstberger
Head of Production: Sonia McLaverty
Chief Strategy Officer: Matt Pearce
Creative Technologist: Andy Rovenko
CEO: Mike Napolitano
General Manager: Khia Croy

Freelance Creative Director: Max Maclean

Company: Pow Wow Solutions
Co-Founder: Ben Field
Co-Founder: Justin Beaconsfield