Gemini 3 and other chatbots scrutinized as unreliable news gatherers

AI search engines and chatbots keep rolling out new updates

with companies claiming they're more helpful and more powerful than ever. Google released its Gemini 3 Pro this week, the latest update to its artificial intelligence

system. Microsoft's CoPilot chat is expanding its integration into Outlook, Word, and other

Microsoft programs. And OpenAI recently launched its own search engine, Atlas, powered by its

AI Engine Chat GPT. With so many ways to search the web, what source do you turn to for news

If you're relying on an AI-powered chatbot or search engine, then this story is for you

Jeffrey Blevins is a professor at University of Cincinnati and a faculty fellow of the Center

for Cyber Strategy and Policy. He spoke with Straight Arrow News about using artificial

intelligence sources or artificial algorithms, as he likes to call it. I've never been comfortable with the term intelligence, right? Artificial, I'm good with

And to me, you know, algorithm is just a much better, you know, moniker for that

Blevins says AI can be used for a variety of tasks. But when it comes to news consumption

and reliable, verifiable information, it still has a long way to go

Well there seems to be all this praise about it and all this hype And I think there a real disconnect there It like yeah I seen Sora 2 in terms of how well it can make deepfake videos and they are really impressive But that a very different thing than when we talking about relying on you know information integrity

Blevins says AI can be a first step when researching news, politics, or current events

But it should never be the only source. source. Because as advanced as AI technology has become, it is still flawed. When we asked

ChatGPT who the president of the United States was, it responded Donald J. Trump, but showed a

picture of former President Joe Biden. When we asked who was in the photo it provided, it doubled

down, still calling it Trump. Even though it was wrong, ChatGPT, like other AI systems

carries a disclaimer that it can make mistakes. Google's Gemini-powered AI search results

display a similar reminder that they may include mistakes. And we should absolutely not be relying on it

Again, at best, it's a first source. And then actually, I would take issue with the word source

It might be a first step. What can it gather quickly? I need to be willing to take the next action steps

that go to different sources to try and verify that. Blevins also referred to a high-profile AI blunder

in the Chicago Sun-Times that was then shared in the Philadelphia Inquirer

A journalist was tasked with compiling a summer reading list, and the reporter had AI do the assignment

It mixed up names you know authors with titles you know had those mismatched You know sometimes the titles weren perfect and sometimes they were books that didn exist at all or authors that didn exist at all

So that's a pretty big miss. Blevins says using AI as a starting point would have been fine, but it should never have been the final product

So if we go back, for instance, to, you know, the Chicago Sun-Times freelancer, okay, could have put that in and then went and then fact-checked other sources, you know, to get that information

What concerns me is that it's likely to develop more bad habits

It's going to encourage us to be lazy, to simply take, you know, one source as it, right

When you ask AI systems to describe their own weaknesses in news gathering, they acknowledge a number of them

Take OpenAI's new search engine, Atlas. When we asked what challenges it faces in gathering and delivering news, it replied, short answer, everything

Long answer, buckle up. It then listed issues such as accuracy, information verification, and information overload, adding that there is more content than any human brain can handle

And when news outlets issue corrections or retractions, can AI keep up with those changes

Atlas told us, short answer, no, saying there was no indication it tracks or flags corrections to stories that it crawls

Even though we have this plethora now it has really eroded trust We had more trust in journalists the institution of journalism in the past with fewer sources than we do now And Blevins says that even though users can

customize these AI algorithms to fit their interests, including news, remember that AI

has its own interests too. I would say, you know, a bigger concern would be, you know, what is

you know, the algorithm really programmed to do. You know, what is, you know, there's a commercial

interest here, right? And that is to keep you engaged. So, you know, the longer that, you know

it can keep you in front of the screen, you know, clicking on items, making comments

sharing those, you know, those items, those are all, you know, signs of engagement

The latest Pew Research survey shows 62% of Americans interact with artificial intelligence at least once a week, making it a massive market that is rapidly growing

A big thank you to Jeffrey Blevins for taking the time to talk with us about AI and how to use it responsibly when consuming news

And related to this story, Straight Arrow News recently reported on an international study that found 45% of AI responses to news prompts had at least one significant issue, and 81% had some form of issue

You can find that story on our website or mobile app by searching AI News Report

For Straight Arrow News, I'm Cara Rucker