AI ‘Slop’ Websites Are Publishing Climate Science Denial
At the start of June, MSN, the world’s fourth-largest news aggregator, posted an article from a new climate-focused publication, Climate Cosmos, entitled: “Why Top Experts Are Rethinking Climate Alarmism”.
The article – by “Kathleen Westbrook M.Sc Climate Science” – cited a finding from the “Global Climate Research Institute” that “65 percent of surveyed climate professionals advocate for pragmatic, solution-focused messaging over fear-driven warnings.”
But there were a couple of major problems: the Global Climate Research Institute doesn’t exist, and nor does Kathleen Westbrook, whose profile on Climate Cosmos has now been renamed to ‘Henrieke Otte’.
The article accused those who advocate for climate action of overstating the harms caused by burning fossil fuels. It also promoted the work of Bjorn Lomborg, who has repeatedly called on governments to halt spending on climate action.
This piece was seemingly a breach of MSN’s “prohibited content” rules for posting false information, which MSN partners must abide by to access the aggregator’s huge reach of around 200 million monthly visitors. It was also posted on another U.S. news aggregator, Newsbreak.
Climate Cosmos only has a small pool of contributors, according to its website, yet pumps out multiple stories a day. To do this, it appears to be relying on the help of artificial intelligence (AI).
The first line of another piece, “What the Climate Movement Isn’t Telling You”, appeared to include the response to a prompt – an instruction given to an AI platform.
It read: “I’ll help you write an article about ‘What the Climate Movement Isn’t Telling You’ with current facts and data. Let me search for the latest information first.”
“As technology advances, integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into our operations offers exciting opportunities to enhance the journalism at Climate Cosmos,” reads the AI disclaimer on site’s “about us” page. It also states: “we clearly disclose when AI-generated content is used”. However, Isacson’s piece included no such disclosure.
The article falsely claimed that humanity is on course to stay within the temperature goals set by the 2015 Paris Agreement, using this as a launchpad to attack the climate movement for allegedly failing to “reflect these new realities”.
Recent predictions suggest that the global average surface temperature is likely to increase to by anywhere between 1.9C and 2.9C by the end of the century, well above 1.5C limit set by the Paris Agreement.
This appears to confirm the concerns of technology experts who have warned that AI “has the potential to turbocharge climate disinformation”.
Climate Cosmos is “clearly the lowest possible level spam – they’re just trying to put out content out for some easy clicks, hence the clickbait-y titles,” said Philip Newell, communications co-chair of the Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD) coalition. “AI has brought the cost of disinformation down to nothing. It has automated bullshit.”
“It appears to be mostly AI slop, rather than a concerted disinformation operation,” he said – adding that AI has “no concern for accuracy”.
Climate Cosmos posted a host of articles on MSN every day and has more than 45,000 subscribers on the aggregator. However, in July, all of its MSN content disappeared, as did all the content produced by other publications belonging to its parent company.
A spokesperson for Microsoft, which owns MSN, told DeSmog: “when we
become aware of instances that violate our policies, we take action to
remove them as soon as possible.”
Newsbreak did not respond to DeSmog’s request for comment.
Even despite – or perhaps because – of this historical lack of editorial rigour, Climate Cosmos has been used by multiple anti-climate campaign groups and publications.
The website’s content has been cited by the Heartland Institute, Wattsupwiththat, the European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE), and the American Spectator. The climate denial project CFACT also reprinted an article from Climate Cosmos on its own site.
Climate Cosmos “appears to be climate denier propaganda posing as a science blog,” said Michael E. Mann, a leading climate scientist and Presidential Distinguished Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania." Excerpt from DeSmog
