AI-powered transcription tool used in hospitals invents things no one ever said, researchers say [Video]

SAN FRANCISCO — Tech behemoth OpenAI has touted its artificial intelligence-powered transcription tool Whisper as having near “human level robustness and accuracy.”

But Whisper has a major flaw: It is prone to making up chunks of text or even entire sentences, according to interviews with more than a dozen software engineers, developers and academic researchers. Those experts said some of the invented text – known in the industry as hallucinations – can include racial commentary, violent rhetoric and even imagined medical treatments.

Experts said such fabrications are problematic because Whisper is being used in a slew of industries worldwide to translate and transcribe interviews, generate text in popular consumer technologies, and create subtitles for videos.

More concerning, they said, is a rush by medical centers to utilize Whisper-based tools to transcribe patients’ consultations with doctors, despite OpenAI’s warnings that the tool should not be used in “high-risk domains.”

The full …