'Megalopolis' trailer's fake critic quotes were AI-generated

Was just talking with a microbiology researcher yesterday about ChatGPT. They use it for helping to write code for analyzing their lab data and they were surprised I said it's likely to lead them astray at times, especially if they don't know the code well enough to spot the errors it might generate.

Despite my PhD being in NLP, they still seemed incredulous at my assertion. I truly think the general public have not been adequately warned that they cannot trust the outputs of LLMs. I wonder how long until that fact becomes commonplace.

> Sources tell Variety it was not Lionsgate or Egan’s intention to fabricate quotes, but was an error in properly vetting and fact-checking the phrases provided by the consultant

On the one hand, it's surprising that none of the people involved in creating, publishing, and marketing this trailer raised an eyebrow. I don't know much about film history but I raised an eyebrow. And presumably, it took MANY people to make this trailer happen, and a good chunk went to film school or otherwise know enough to know that this was fishy.

On the other hand, things like this likely get caught during production all the time and we just never hear about them.

What is with people treating LLMs like a search engine? All of this could have been avoided by just using Google.

> an error in properly vetting and fact-checking the phrases provided by the consultant

The error was "not doing it".

GoDaddy has advertised, on TV, generative AI for social media comment creation as a part of their website services.

Faking your reviews with AI is not a good idea. The makers of Megalopolis got caught, and you could too. Their efforts to spin and deny won't reverse the damage.

Don't use AI for this. Don't even do this the old fashioned way!

It sounds like a dumb idea from the get go. Even if the quotes were authentic, "They hated my previous work too" is a crummy gimmick.

Coppola doesn't need a gimmick. He's famous and the film will sell some tickets just on his name. If the film sucks then it sucks. Don't make him look desperate in the process.

> Sources tell Variety it was not Lionsgate or Egan’s intention to fabricate quotes

er...yes it was? he typed "WHAT ARE SOME QUOTES FROM FAMOUS FILM REVIEWERS ABOUT FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA’S MOVIES?" then copied the random text it generated and put it in to an email and sent an invoice for a jillion dollars to Lionsgate, who then put them in a trailer.

that's obviously an intention to fabricate quotes, and any social acceptance of it is just ridiculous.

No sympathy here. Ive been using AI for all sorts of tasks, but at the same time, going back and carefully reviewing the output or testing the code and making my own revisions. I think it's useful for giving it a request and doing something else while it creates a baseline. You still need to take that baseline and know what to do with it. Otherwise, blind leading the blind?

I wonder how long it will be until they have the AI make up the quotes and then get approval from the reviewers similar to the way Luxottica designs sunglasses and then asks the various brands to pick from them. The brands themselves don't design the sunglasses they just sign off on designs by Luxottica.

Great marketing. I hadn’t heard of this movie, now it’s controversial. Now we just need some mob threats like The Godfather.

> We offer our sincere apologies to the critics involved and to Francis Ford Coppola and American Zoetrope for this inexcusable error in our vetting process. We screwed up. We are sorry.

Integrity is refreshing.