Curated on
August 2, 2023
In a recent incident in the web world, a Reddit user managed to trick AI article generators into producing a story on a fake 'World of Warcraft' feature named 'Glorbo'. The user, known as kaefer_kriegerin, noticed that bots were indiscriminately scouring WoW's subreddit for threads to transform into news items. As a way of teaching them a lesson, kaefer_kriegerin created an enticing thread about this non-existent feature, eventually leading a site named Zleague.gg to publish an article on it.
Details of the Glorbo feature were sparse, mainly because it was a fabrication. Because of this, Zleague's article was filled with ambiguous statements about 'anticipated changes' and 'potential impacts' to the game. Comments about other made-up features were also included in the news piece. The prank not only tricked AI, but also indirectly involved other non-aware WoW players and a Blizzard developer. The Zleague article was taken down shortly after kaefer_kriegerin celebrated their victory. This prank resurfaces concerns regarding AI deployments and the need for verification in automatic content generation.