Check Your F**cking Sources, People!

I’m sorry. This is a rant. Which you’ve probably guessed by the title, duh! The straw that broke my back was the lead I saw: “Sweden built smart machines where crows trade trash for food, turning clever birds into unexpected city cleaners.” A clearly AI-generated image didn’t help the credibility (a three-legged crow is quite telling), yet it’s the headline that made me do the search. “Search” is such a big word, though. It was literally one query. Not Sweden, but one Swedish startup. Not built, but run a one-time pilot. And it didn’t get anywhere close to turning crows into city cleaners as the project was abandoned with zero follow-up. Fact check here. Yet it sure works as eye candy if you want to glue someone’s attention to your clearly AI-generated LinkedIn post that tries to sell something (I don’t know what exactly; I’m incentivized to stop reading once I see an AI-generated graphic). Links No Longer Mean Credibility Crow cleaners’ story, as amusing as it might have been,…