This column has previously dismissed artificial intelligence as a bit of a dud as far as local news went.
It was hopeless at reviewing albums — once insisting one was actually an art exhibition in Berlin — and generally more hindrance than help. But my view has shifted in recent months, and AI has become more widespread.
The “Chronicle” has had a rough year. A key member of staff has been off sick since May, and we haven’t the budget to bring in cover. So we’ve all mucked in — including muggins, subbing every single story in the paper in the hope that our eagle-eyed reader who delights in grammatical errors (hello Kate) doesn’t take pen to paper.
A few months into this grind, I discovered AI could actually be useful. One day, I pasted in some copy and asked it to check for missing words — and it worked a treat. It’s great at catching grammar slips and dropped words (the bane of my life—or bane of life, as I might have written without it). Chuck some text at it, ask for a list of errors, and bob’s your uncle.
It also flags odd facts — misspelled names I might miss — and other errors. It’s excellent, though not infallible. It’s hopeless with funerals (the names! the names!) and doesn’t grasp house style. But without it, we wouldn’t have kept up the “Chronicle’s” standard during our colleague’s absence.
That said, it’s slippier than a sack of eels. You have to give it precise set of instructions every time. Sometimes one set lasts for several stories; other times, it forgets everything after one.
And the golden rule: never, ever let it write anything from scratch.
The problem with AI — like HS2 — is its name. AI is not intelligent. HS2 wasn’t about fast trains. AI is just very large predictive text, HS2 more about slow trains running more often on local lines.
It gets some things right, but you have to be careful. I know people talk to their AI; I tend to bark instructions. In my head, it’s a middle-aged jobsworth — bad at their job, tolerated due to management inertia. Most of what they say is rubbish, but they know where the biros are kept and have a fine clipboard collection.
A good example: our recent feature on Garfield Weston, the wealthy wartime MP for Congleton and founder of Allied Bakeries. His charitable foundation still gives away millions.
Before writing, I asked Microsoft Copilot what it knew. It reeled off reliable facts from Wikipedia, then claimed the charity had donated to Cheshire Wildlife Trust.
“Great!” I thought—a nice local angle.
I asked for more detail. It replied: “There are no donations to Cheshire Wildlife Trust, although there may have been in theory.”
When I pointed out the error, it said, shamelessly: “Thank you for correcting my mistake.”
Have you seen the advert with the busy man who feeds info into Copilot and grabs a printed presentation on the run? The ad ends there. It doesn’t show him being sacked five minutes later for claiming the MD keeps herrings as pets or that Cheshire Wildlife Trust received imaginary donations.
It’s quite good at rewriting long things — an MP’s speech, for instance — but you have to check line by line for fabrications. It always fabricates. Basically: AI is great if you already know what you want and aren’t lazy or gullible.
Dean Dunham’s excellent legal phone-in on LBC this week warned against using AI to prepare court cases. He said AI pulls law from other countries and finds “case law” in chat rooms, courtesy of the proverbial “Fast Show” men down the pub who know all about law. And it only answers what you ask — ask the wrong question, get the wrong answer.
Dunham cited a man who lost a court case because AI prepared his documents. He forgot to say he was a business, not a consumer. Consumer protection law didn’t apply, and the judge threw out the case. He lost thousands.
As we report this week, some residents are struggling with Cheshire East Council’s AI chatbot. It’s partly what Dunham said — AI only answers what it hears, and only what it’s programmed to respond to. Our reporter got stuck in a loop: the chatbot kept asking if she wanted a text, she kept saying no, and round it went.
If you’re a pensioner and not tech-savvy, it’s a recipe for frustration. To be fair, the council says it’s working on improvements and it will get better.
AI can be — and often is — very useful. But when you hit its limits, it can be maddening.
