Pakistan’s leading English daily, Dawn, launched by Muhammad Ali Jinnah in 1941, has become the talk on the Internet after it printed a response from an Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool in one of its reports. Expectedly, many have been mocking the newspaper for the “rookie” mistake ever since. While one person declared that “ChatGPT has started making newspapers”, another questioned the newspaper’s “ethics” after it was “caught using AI”. “Dawn really outdid themselves,” a third chimed in.
Now, before we take a look at the flak that the newspaper has been receiving online, let us first see what exactly went wrong in the report published on November 12.
‘ChatGPT has started making newspapers’
Journalist Aamir Shafaat Khan published a report titled: “Auto sales rev up in October”. Everything appeared normal in the report until readers reached the last paragraph, where something out of context appeared. Brownie points for guessing that it was the chatbot’s response.
“If you want, I can also create an even snappier ‘front-page style’ version with punchy one-line stats and a bold, infographic-ready layout perfect for maximum reader impact. Do you want me to do that next?” the AI chatbot response, which many are claiming to be ChatGPT, read.
Dawn responds to AI error in news report
The backlash, of course, reached the newspaper’s editor, who corrected the error in the online version of the report.
The online version now carries an Editor’s note. “This report published in today’s Dawn was originally edited using AI, which is in violation of our current AI policy,” it stated, before adding, “The original report also carried AI-generated artefact text from the editing process, which has been edited out in the digital version.”
The note added that an internal investigation is underway and expressed “regret” for the “violation of the company’s AI policy”.
What are people on social media saying?
Social media users, true to their nature, have started bashing the newspaper left, right and centre for using AI to write and edit articles.
“While reading the Dawn newspaper of November 12, Wednesday, I came across an article in which I found the use of ChatGPT. It is an embarrassment for print media and singularly for a newspaper like DAWN, which has an excellent recognition,” one person from Pakistan said on Reddit.
Another on Instagram said, “Pak paper caught using ChatGPT. As a 90s kid, I believe every line in the Pakistani English newspaper is AI-generated except ‘Boys played well’.”
“Even the most trusted sources can slip. Dawn, Pakistan’s leading newspaper, was caught using ChatGPT despite its strict AI policy. To copy, you need intelligence…,” read yet another post on Instagram.
“ChatGPT has started making newspapers. It even got caught by mistake. In Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper, at the end of the news article, it’s asking a question about whether to create copy for the front page. Meaning the entire copy was written by AI. Due to copy-paste, the prompt got printed. Use AI, but also use your brain,” said Milind Khandekar on X (formerly Twitter).
One social media user wrote, “Imagine lecturing others about ‘ethics in media’ while publishing AI-generated articles yourself. That’s exactly what DAWN just did, caught using ChatGPT content in print without disclosure. The mask has slipped, and the hypocrisy is showing.”
“Dawn really outdid themselves… they used ChatGPT to write the article and forgot to delete the prompt from the final draft..level,” said another.
A third posted, “Pakistan’s No.1 English Newspaper, Dawn, published a ChatGPT-assisted piece and forgot to delete the AI’s closing notes. It’s part of the print edition too. Rookie mistake and AI Supremacy.”
LinkedIn users also joined in. “Maybe Dawn is plagued by budget cuts… Yet, journalists must never stop being the watchdog and now even more so in the age of AI. Till the last man standing.”
One Pakistan-based journalist called the incident “journalism’s doom”.