German magazine publishes fake interview with Michael Schumacher made by AI – 04/20/2023 – Sport

German magazine Die Aktuel this week published what it falsely advertised as “first interview with Michael Schumacher” following the accident that apparently knocked him out of consciousness in 2013.

Schumacher was obviously not heard in the interview. The magazine used an artificial intelligence chat to generate the answers and assign them to the seven-time Formula 1 world champion. The former driver’s family says they are going to court against the publication.

The magazine put it like a machete: “No thin and nebulous half-sentences from friends. But answers from him! By Michael Schumacher, 54”

One of the responses published by Die Aktuel: “My life has completely changed since then [o acidente]. It was a terrible time for my wife, my children and the whole family.”

Another: “I was so badly injured that I was in a sort of artificial coma for months because my body couldn’t have handled it any other way. I was having a hard time, but the hospital staff managed to get me back to my room. family”.

The site used for the “interview” was a program called Character.ai, which works along the lines of the already known ChatGPT. Only at the end of the text can one read a kind of explanation.

“Did Michael Schumacher really say it all himself? The interview was online. On a page that has to do with artificial intelligence, or AI for short,” noted the magazine, whose cover date is April 15, 2023.

On the first page of the printed version, there is the inscription “looks deceptively real”, which sounds like a disclaimer, anticipating criticism.

The publication caused astonishment in the country. German media commentator Boris Rosenkranz wrote in an article that the play was “too stupid to be true”.

Since the skiing accident in France on December 29, 2013, the former pilot’s medical condition is unknown and his family has done everything to protect his privacy. Schumacher is believed to be at the family home in Switzerland.

In 2021, Netflix released the documentary “Schumacher”, in which his wife Corinna says that “Michael is here. Different, but he is here and I think that gives us strength”.

His son, Mick Schumacher, followed in his father’s career and became a Formula 1 racer. But he lost his seat at the Haas team last year and is now a reserve driver at Mercedes.

Suing Die Aktuel (the current one, in Portuguese) is not new for the Schumacher family, which has already done so on at least two other occasions, in relation to “misleading covers”.

In 2014, the publication placed a photo of Michael and Corinna on the front page with the headline “Awakened”. But the title referred to another magazine report in that issue, which spoke of people waking up from comas, unlike Schumacher himself.

A year later, it stamped a photo of Corinna on the cover with the caption “Corinna Schumacher – a new love makes her happy”. But the text was about her daughter Gina. The suit for misleading covers was dismissed.