The Reports of Jim Carrey's Death Are a Failure Mode

Liked the article's point that degree of fact-checking / verification should correspond to the risk of distributing a claim.

"Taylor Swift wore fancy dress xyz" -> who cares, copy & paste.

"Drinking soy sauce cleans your bowels" -> at least check with a doctor before parroting such dangerous bs (and if you don't & it contributes to someone's death, that's on you).

I do not care if journals or news publish fake information, it is a rag.

But hospitals and goverments should do much better verification. Not just follow what CNN or Fox broadcasted today.

After being very concerned that the Google agent seriously believes hitting one's jaw with a hammer was a real phenomenon, citing that the real cases must be private, a medical journal mentioned it and they would never pick up tiktok rumours (they essentially did) etc I thought it would have surely been fooled here. I suppose if not, important facts like this could be agent-checked and need a 2/2 consensus in that case

To be fair, the guy on the picture doesn't even look like Jim Carrey, so...

When it mentions jimmy carter's death I wasn't sure if the article was irony as I had completely missed that he had died (December 29, 2024 - not sure how I missed it, must have been ignoring the news that week)

I think AI has increased the volume of such mistakes, but not necessarily the ratio. Compare this to all too human false reports this week of Justice Alito's retirement.

Nina Totenberg was the source and has been remarkably honest about it. She saw some activity around the court, asked about it, heard "retirement announcements," and that was sufficient for her to rush a story about Alito retiring. Given her stature it was instant national news until a denial was issued.

It can be a win if the increased AI slop volume leads us to inspect all news more closely, regardless of source.

I think they ought to weight Wikipedia claims by the amount of exposure it has had.

The title made my heart skip a beat

Regardless of the facts, it would be a lot better if Jim Carrey directly addressed this. I don’t blame people for falling down conspiracy rabbit holes when someone they look up to dramatically changes their appearance and doesn’t say anything about it.