In 2018, Steve Brill and Gordon Crovitz set up NewsGuard. The company says that it analyses news sources from across the world to assess reliability and provide tools for others to protect themselves against false information. One of its claimed abilities is the tracking of articles generated by AI with little or no human oversight, reporting in October 2024 that it had, so far, identified “1,090 Unreliable AI-Generated News and information websites.”
But why do some websites want to generate AI ‘news’? According to Fast Company magazine it’s to “produce automated content at scale to jump on Google trends and slough off profit.” And one of the examples they give is obituaries. Website owners are using AI to create articles about the recently deceased since such folk are often the subject of searches and social media sharing, which means their dodgy site, full of ugly adverts, gets a quick traffic spike. Inevitably, the robotic articles are far from a decent reflection on the life of the departed and contain all kinds of errors, much to the upset of any relatives or friends who stumble across them.
Not that writing about the recently deceased is a simple matter even for humans. A longstanding aphorism (reported to go back to a Spartan politician of the 6th century BC) tells us that “of the dead nothing but good is to be said.” That’s understandable since they aren’t around to defend themselves and why focus on the negative when their life is now done? Yet, it can feel like deceit as you give the impression that the departed was a much finer person than most found them to be. And shouldn’t we always strive for truth?
In the Bible book of 2 Samuel (1:17-27) David eulogises his friend Jonathan and Jonathan’s father, King Saul, after both are killed in battle by ancient Israel’s enemies. David’s words about Jonathan ring true to their close friendship. But his words about Saul are harder to read, given the king jealously tried to kill David when David had done nothing disloyal or harmful to Saul and, actually, had treated him with great honour as the Lord’s anointed (2 Samuel 1:14). How could David speak of Saul as “beloved”, “lovely” and “mighty” when he had been so wickedly treated by the man and when God himself had withdrawn from Saul (1 Samuel 15:26)?
Part of the answer lies in the fact that David isn’t simply lamenting the passing of an individual. Saul was more than that. As king of Israel he headed up the nation, represented the people of God upon the earth. To strike him down was to strike at more than the person who wore the crown. It was to strike at the people which, in turn, was to strike at God. David’s words reflected Saul in his place as king not just Saul as the bitter, crazed ruler who wanted to harm an innocent and faithful citizen. So though God had rejected Saul as king, taken his Spirit from him and changed his family’s royal inheritance, David still spoke well of Saul because he was king and that office deserved such respect. It wasn’t an artificial obituary.
Photo by Sandy Millar on Unsplash
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Introduction to this series of posts
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Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated in whole or in part into any other language.