A fake interview with Michael Schumacher, which was written by artificial intelligence, caused a big scandal in Germany.
The family of Michael Schumacher is dealing with what is likely to be the first major fraud in which artificial intelligence in sports has been used to deceive readers.
When the headline “Michael Schumacher: first interview!” appeared on the front page of the German tabloid Die Aktuelle this week. and inside a comprehensive interview with the Formula 1 pilot, about whose state of health otherwise his relatives have been keeping a secret for years since the unfortunate skiing accident, it was a big sensation.
The 54-year-old former competitor also answered questions about his family life after the accident and his state of health.
Has the silence been broken?
How did the German journalists manage to get to “Schumi”? That was on the minds of just about everyone who saw the magazine headline. After all, he has not appeared in public since his head injury in December 2013, and his loved ones guard him like a golden treasure in a bank.
“We’re living together at home. We’re doing therapy. We’re doing everything to make Michael better, to feel good and to just feel our family, our bond,” Schumacher’s wife Corinna said in a 2021 Netflix documentary. “We’re trying to continue as family, the way Michael liked it and still likes it. And we go on with our lives.” No more is officially known about the health of the former star of Benetton, Ferrari and Mercedes.
Anyone who carefully read the now published interview soon understood that everything was different. The article was introduced with the information that “websites where you can conduct interviews with famous personalities” were used as a source, and the editors only subtly note that “artificial intelligence provides the answers”.
Such an invasion of privacy is very bad for the German’s family and they are already preparing a lawsuit against the publisher, which is the media group Funke. Not even a small note that the answers “sound almost real” will probably not help the publisher, which was probably supposed to be a loop predicting a legal battle.
Artificial intelligence is attacking
According to Dr. Justin Jutte, who is an assistant professor of intellectual property law at the University of Dublin, Ireland, the past month has been an extreme one for the development of artificial intelligence.
According to her, Schumacher’s case does not fall under copyright law, but rather under the law on personality rights, similar to fake news known as fake news or deepfakes.
After all, writing a fictitious interview using a chatbot is inherently legal, but Die Aktuelle went beyond the bounds of good taste (and quite possibly applicable legislation) by presenting such a creation as the real answers of the seven-time Formula 1 world champion.
According to Boris Rosenkranz from the German media blog Übermedien, this weekly is nothing new. “Die Aktuelle is notorious for its false and manipulated articles, but this one was particularly brazen and stupid,” the expert said.
Even the serious media have joined their competitor. “Die Aktuelle is a gossip magazine with another shocking Schumacher cover,” wrote news website news.de.
Earlier, the weekly made the front pages because of a misleading cover with Schumacher, which indicated that the competitor was photographed on it for the first time after his skiing accident.
The case already has its first victims. The editor of the magazine, who sanctioned the publication of the fake interview, lost his job. And the management also dismissed the editor-in-chief Anne Hoffmann.
“This distasteful and misleading article should never have been published. It in no way meets the journalistic standards that we and our readers expect from a publisher like Funke,” said Funke CEO Bianca Pohlmann.
