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Comment by Sophira

1 day ago

It looks like the headline may have changed as well since the HN submission, assuming that the title here was the original headline. Now the headline seems to be "Suspect in Palisades fire allegedly used ChatGPT to generate images of burning forests and cities".

Changing the headline post hoc without any indication of the change is kind of a pet peeve of mine. Why is it not indicated as errata in the article like other edits when the body of the text is changed or factual information is confirmed?

  • Headlines are marketing and layout design, not journalism. Journalists have no role in title generation. And changes could be due to AB testing. Seems relatively immaterial to me.

    • I call BS on that given how many people ONLY read the headline. It is (well, should be) the responsibility of the journalism industry, of which the editors are still a part of, to accurately convey information, and that includes in the part of most heavily shared and read.

      (and yah, yada yada about journalism no longer, or maybe never, being about truth, I get it, but still IMO the field should be held to the higher journalistic standard)