Anyone following the Irish Times AI controversy?

[PlasticSheetingRTÉNews]

I’m still trying to piece this together, so correct me if I’m wrong.

An article was published earlier this week entitled “Irish Women’s Obsession with Fake Tan is Problematic”. It was written by an author named Adriana Acosta-Cortez.

The article was published in the Opinion section. The Opinion Editor is the very recently appointed (under three weeks ago).

Earlier today, Rosanna Cooney, Business Correspondent with The Currency tweets that the accompanying author photo felt off to her so she ran it through an AI checker which suggested it was a fake image.

The Irish Times removed the article- the link is still live, but the text has been removed “pending checks”.

The “author” has since tweeted this (attached).

It’s such a strange story.

Shocking that a paper like the Irish Times hasn’t done more due diligence. The “author” seems to have pretty much zero online or professional presence so it’s hard to see how she was given a chance to pitch for this article.

I didn’t read the article (headline was enough to turn me off) but comments on Twitter suggest it was weirdly written with unusual sentence structure.

It was the article claiming she was 29 which sparked curiosity.

The Irish Times has been going downhill for the last 15 years.

The last 5 years have also seen a rapid rise in anti British/English commentary from some of its better known journalists, e.g. Fintan O'Toole; with no real substance behind them.

Shame, as it used to be very high quality newspaper

I saw a reference to that from someone else on Twitter who mentioned that the article mentioned the author being of a certain race or ethnicity but the photo didn’t match that.

I can’t say I’ve noticed any anti-British sentiment.

The introduction of Breda O’Brien made me cancel my subscription, though.

They annoy me by not allowing comments on certain stories

The article was bizarre - suggesting that fake tan is racist? How did that one get past the editor?

The article was insane. It kept referring to wearing of fake tan as a fetish. And of Irish women's trying to look exotic with darker skin, which is a problematic statement in itself.

Says so much about the IT that this was published.

The Irish Times is a poor excuse of a newspaper and has been for a long time. I cannot understand how it's touted as the newspaper of record.

Growing up we got Irish Times delivered and I continued that when we got married. Loved reading it.
Cancelled it some years back and now just get it on Thursday for the property porn and on Saturdays.
I don't bother to get it online.
I do have the Indo app but don't buy the newspaper except on Sundays.

I do find it a bit odd tbh that so many of us use fake tan and bronzer - I'm including myself in this.

Not really a surprise with our weather @LadyEloise1

The comments were great though. People from other countries who live here laughing at the idea it was racism.

Today they have an article about how awful Irish men look at the beach FFS

Is this the IT that published a puff piece praising Sidbh Gallagher? She’s a surgeon from Louth with no insurance who operates on children removing healthy breasts?

She gets sad apparently is she doesn’t get enough ‘deet the teets’ in a week.

I commented on the ridiculousness of the article on the IT’s Facebook page. I got a few likes but all those notifications have disappeared now from my Facebook. When I saw the author had blue hair I had to check it wasn’t 1 April. My guess is that someone trying to expose the ludicrousness of identity politics created the article and author using AI, then pitched it to the Opinion editor using the false persona and then amazingly got the article accepted. I look forward to further developments… 😈

It’s been confirmed as a hoax-unreal that the editors let this through - obviously no checks at all on the credentials of the so called ‘author’