[imagesource:sagov]

A viral tweet has levelled an accusation at the Presidency that a recent speech by our commander-in-chief was partly written by ChatGPT.

Where there is smoke there is fire, and the Presidency has confirmed it is “investigating the matter”. If true, it continues the legacy of a government that seems to outsource all of its responsibilities and thinking.

The 21 November speech delivered by the president was the subject of debate in a series of posts on X, which claim that the “thoughts about decolonising education”, were not the president’s or any of his speechwriters. Presidency spokesperson Vincent Magwenya strongly denies this, saying they do not use “AI tools for content such as speeches”.

Magwenya said the parts of the speech in question were written by the Department of Basic Education and provided to the office of the president.

Someone seems to be in big trouble as the Presidency now wants to see the draft of the speech from whoever came up with the very suspicious speech.

“The use of AI to produce speeches or any other material is unacceptable, and action will be taken should these reports prove to be correct,” said Magwenya.

YouTuber Roman Cabanac set fire to the speechwriting circle when he posted on X that he believes AI wrote Ramaphosa’s speech. Other X users jumped on this, and parts of the speech were vigorously checked for AI content with online tools.

Ramaphosa’s speech in praise of decolonised education was written by AI.

Credit to @RomanCabanac for the hunch and @mike_said_what for the proof. 1/2 pic.twitter.com/NVBXXvkRdq

— Bloody Aardvark (@AardvarkBloody) November 23, 2023

Plagiarism checker software Scribbr pointed to an 89% chance that the section of the speech was generated by AI.

Not everyone is convinced there was AI involvement though. Jean le Roux, a research associate at the Digital Forensic Research Lab said that “although parts could have been written by AI, there are currently no tools that can reliably verify this”.

Le Roux said that Ramaphosa’s speech “may have been run through ChatGPT after writing to ensure correct grammar and facts. If this was the case, the text might be flagged by an AI checker, but Le Roux said this was a less objectionable way to use ChatGPT than developing entire sections of content through it.”

At this stage, any form of intelligence should actually be welcomed.

[source:news24]