AI Fabricates More than Fake Legal Authorities

It can make up fake movie review quotes too.

Lionsgate pulled a trailer for the forthcoming Francis Ford Coppola movie, Megalopolis, this week. The trailer, which meant to show that some of Coppola's most well-regarded works were not always appreciated by movie critics at the time, contained multiple fabricated quotes.

Where did the fabricated quotes come from? Variety reports they were AI generated.

Sources tell Variety it was not Lionsgate or Egan's intention to fabricate quotes, but was an error in properly vetting and fact-checking the phrases provided by the consultant. The intention of the trailer was to demonstrate that Coppola's revered work, much like "Megalopolis," has been met with criticism. It appears that AI was used to generate the false quotes from the critics.

For instance, the trailer claimed that Pauline Kael wrote in the New Yorker that "The Godfather" was "diminished by its artsiness." Kael in fact loved the movie.

When Variety prompted AI service ChatGPT to provide negative criticism about Coppola's work from well-known reviewers, the responses provided were strikingly similar to the quotes included in the trailer.

It seems lawyers are not the only ones who need to be careful relying on the veracity of AI-generated sources.