Rapper Kanye ‘Ye’ West’s Hebrew-language apology for anti-Semitic comments appears to have been generated by the ChatGPT artificial intelligence tool, the outlet TMZ has claimed.
The African-American artist ended up “canceled” last year over statements that the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) declared to be anti-Semitic. He lost major sponsorships and got banned from a number of social media platforms – including X (formerly Twitter) – after he praised Adolf Hitler.
On Tuesday, he returned to Instagram with a post written entirely in Hebrew, claiming to be sorry for the things he said and that he did not intend to harm anyone. The machine translation to English left a lot of people online suspicious that the statement had been written by someone other than Ye, however.
“I sincerely apologize to the Jewish community for any unintended outburst caused by my words or actions, it was not my intention to hurt or disrespect, and I deeply regret any pain I may have caused. I am committed to starting with myself and learning from this experience to ensure greater sensitivity and understanding in the future. Your forgiveness is important to me, and I am committed to making amends and promoting unity,” the post said.
The celebrity-oriented tabloid TMZ decided to test the theory, running Ye’s apology through the ‘AI Content Detector’ Scribbr, which said there was an 85% chance that the text had been AI-generated.
TMZ then asked ChatGPT to write an apology for anti-Semitic comments. What they got, after “some trial and error,” was something that they say remarkably overlapped with Ye’s Instagram post (in bold):
"I sincerely apologize to the Jewish community for my recent unintentional outburst. It was not my intention to hurt or demean, and I deeply regret any pain caused. I'm committed to learning from this experience, promoting unity, and making amends. Your forgiveness means a lot to me."
The best-selling artist lost sponsorships and partnerships with Adidas, Balenciaga, Gap, Vogue and the Universal Media Group in 2022, over statements that were denounced as anti-Semitic. The ADL blamed his rhetoric for several instances of "hate-speech vandalism, harassment, and violence” across the US.
ChatGPT, developed by Microsoft-backed OpenAI, has been credited with the uncanny ability to mimic human writing. The New York Times sued both companies earlier this week, claiming they trained their AI tools through copyright infringement of their “uniquely valuable” journalism.