Debunked as false news: Govt ban on ChatGPT, Turkey quake toll 50k

ChatGPT is a spyware espionage programme released by China, hence the Indian government is likely to ban it. ” This was among thousands of forwarded messages including, “According to the New Education Policy, board examinations for class 10th will be discontinued from 1st April 2023” and “Starting Feb 14th, the online cab aggregators Ola and Uber will be allowed to start their cab services across Goa and Manali”, that TOI recently busted as fake. Under the ‘Times Verified’ campaign, readers send suspicious messages circulating on social media to this paper on the WhatsApp number 9819888887. To verify their credibility, our expert panel — made up of reporters, editors and representatives from the municipality and the government — taps into its carefully-cultivated network of trustworthy sources.
Launched nationally on November 21 last year, the ‘Times Verified’ initiative aims to break the chain of viral misinformation and disinformation that has been infecting social media groups. Since the launch, TOI’s editorial team has received close to 1. 2 lakh messages, over a half of which turned out to be false.
Besides misleading headlines, such as, “The unofficial death toll in Turkey/Syria earthquake has crossed 50k by 10th Feb 2023” to “Pakistan to seek monetary help of 2 Lakh Million Dollars from India to pay back its loans to International Monetary Fund (IMF)”, the deluge of fake news also included panic-inducing message like
“Under public protests and pressure, Supreme Court had to convert Asaram Bapu’s life sentence to death penalty. ”

Having grown beyond articles and tweets bearing falsehoods, misinformation is becoming harder to distinguish from fact in the era of AI globally. Misattributed pictures and videos have been rapidly spreading on social media since the earthquake hit Turkiye/Syria last week. Analysis of the footage of a video claiming to show a ‘tsunami’ caused by the earthquake on the southern Turkish coast, for instance, showed it to be from a March 2017 storm in the South African city of Durban.
If online ‘echo chambers’ can influence the outcomes of elections, the half-truths that spread like microbes during pandemics can even prove fatal, say experts.
In this scenario, the job of our chain-breakers — readers who have been regularly forwarding dubious messages to help TOI identify red flags and vaccinate you with the truth — is significant. Among these vigilant chainbreakers are Goa’s Jerome Daniels, Karnataka’s Rajkumar Chakravarthy and Raja Patrao, and Maharashtra’s Dr Vivek Deshpande and Kirtidev Joshi. To join them in the war on misinformation, all you have to do is send anxiety-causing headlines doing the rounds of social media networks to our expert panel. Rest assured that the team will soon separate fact from fiction, relieving you of the fever brought on by viral halftruths.