Facebook is creating an artificial intelligence tool that will summarize news articles into bullet points so that a user won’t have to read the whole article, according to BuzzFeed News.
The AI assistant tool — named “TLDR” for the acronym “too long; didn’t read” — was revealed during an end-of-year companywide meeting on Tuesday, according to audio of the meeting obtained by BuzzFeed News.
A Facebook spokesperson did not immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment.
The prospect of an A.I. tool disrupting and altering the consumption of news was quickly condemned by several journalists and commentators online.
“I feel sometimes like there is someone in FB HQ whose job is trying to come up with new ways of completely destroying any semblance of intelligence in America,” Audrey Cooper, the editor in chief of WNYC, tweeted about the AI tool.
“It’s been less than a year since Facebook’s AI accidentally translated Xi Jinping’s name as ‘Mr. Shithole,’ so I’m gonna take the under on this one ever shipping,” New York Times tech columnist Kevin Roose tweeted, referring to the January incident when Facebook’s AI translated the Chinese president’s name in Burmese to “Mr. Shithole” in English.
“where is the crying blood tears emoji,” Times op-ed contributor Sarah Jeong tweeted. “Sometimes AI is poorly designed. Sometimes AI is poorly implemented. Sometimes AI is such a bad idea that it should never have existed at all.”