AI-generated fake news sparks rumors of Gary Gensler’s resignation

An AI-generated news article sparked rumors that SEC chair Gary Gensler had handed in his resignation at the agency.
Tom Mitchelhill
Posted by Tom Mitchelhill July 3, 2023 2 Mins Read
An AI-generated news article sparked rumors that SEC chair Gary Gensler had handed in his resignation at the agency.

False rumors have again been spreading over the resignation of United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chair Gary Gensler — this time, however, artificial intelligence has seemingly played a part.

On July 1, a news story appeared on a website dubbed “thecryptoalert.com” claiming that SEC chair Gary Gensler had “submitted his resignation following an internal investigation," citing an anonymous official.

However, Cointelegraph found the article’s text scores high on third-party AI-detector ZeroGPT, scoring 96.8%, signaling a high degree of AI text generation.

The website also appears to be very new, with only 17 posts in total, the first of which appears on June 22nd. Most of these articles also appear to make heavy use of artificial intelligence, with all articles scoring about 70% with ZeroGPT.

AI-detector ZeroGPT found that 96.8% of the text was AI-generated. Source: ZeroGPT

In addition to the bulk of the text being AI-generated, a search on internet archive Wayback Machine revealed that the ownership of the website’s domain “thecryptoalert.com” was updated at 4:30pm on June 24.

Related: Hester Peirce: US crypto laws can’t assume ‘everything is a financial asset’

Despite this, a number of accounts reposted the content on Twitter. The most widely viewed post concerning the matter was from an account called @whalechart, which has garnered 1.4 million views at the time of publication.

In a July 3 tweet, Fox Business Network reporter Charles Gasparino confirmed that Gary Gensler is not resigning after reportedly hearing back from the SEC.

This isn’t the first time rumors of Gensler’s resignation have made the rounds. On April 20, claims that Gensler was preparing to be “fired” were circulated by questionable sources.

On June 12, U.S. lawmakers introduced a new bill dubbed the "SEC Stabilization Act" to the House of Representatives. One of its main provisions sought to fire Gensler, calling him a "tyrannical Chairman."

Magazine: Crypto regulation — Does SEC Chair Gary Gensler have the final say?

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