He was shot dead by police. But that's not what Meta AI says happened

The revelation has added pressure for the Albanese government to force Meta to pay for journalism in Australia, after the company closed down its news tab - a dedicated tab for news in the bookmarks section of Facebook - earlier this month.

An analysis by The Canberra Times shows that the Meta AI feature is misleading users by serving up false and, in some cases, defamatory information, including versions of court reports that wrongly state the accused has been convicted.

In one of the most stunning examples of Meta AI's failed attempt at plagiarism, it purported to summarise a paywalled story about the Bondi knife attack stating that the assailant Joel Cauchi - who was shot dead by police officer Amy Scott on April 13 - had "died by suicide in 2020".

In another example, the chatbot was asked to summarise a court report published by this masthead and generated a wildly inaccurate summary that botched key facts, not the least of which is the claim that "the judge found [the accused man] guilty" and that he would be sentenced at a later date.

In fact, The Canberra Times made clear that the matter was yet to be adjudicated and the accused man, who had not even entered a plea, was bailed to appear at a later date.

The so-called summaries are generated when users click on the "ask me anything" function within Facebook or Messenger.

They include incorrect ages and courtrooms and quote from made-up text messages, but appear plausible to someone fresh to the story.

Tony Kendall, managing director of this masthead's parent company ACM, said Meta was blatantly using AI to peddle "fake news".

"Meta has already made plain its disregard for trusted and credible news on its platforms and now its own technology is generating fake news," Mr Kendall said.

"This is reckless and potentially hugely damaging for Australians who care about the truth."

He said while social media was "already awash with harmful content", to see it producing fabricated news and information was alarming.

"If AI repurposes the work of our journalists without our approval, it would amount to theft," Mr Kendall said.

"And if this technology is purporting to summarise real news without doing any of the actual journalism, it is counterfeit content and it risks an explosion of misinformation and disinformation.

"Meta should be showing far more responsibility than this ... All AI operators should provide fair compensation to the creators of original content, such as news outlets."

Meta will stop paying media companies for news when existing agreements expire this year.

The Greens have called on Communications Minister Michelle Rowland to "designate" the social media company under the News Media Bargaining Code, to force it to participate in an independent arbitration.

On some occasions, Meta AI initially said the article was behind a paywall and couldn't be summarised, but it could easily be persuaded with a follow-up prompt asking it again.

Testing showed ChatGPT exhibited similar behaviour, fabricating news articles on request, but Google's Gemini AI refused to provide a summary because it could not access the relevant article.

A Meta spokesperson was unapologetic, saying in a statement that the company's AI chatbot was "new technology and it may not always return the response we intend, which is the same for all generative AI systems".

"We share information within the features themselves to help people understand that AI might return inaccurate or inappropriate outputs," the spokesperson said.

"Since we launched, we've constantly released updates and improvements to our models and we're continuing to work on making them better."

Ms Rowland said the government was concerned by the feature and urged Australian social media users to "verify their news sources and cross-check against other sources of information".

"Australian news publishers deserve fair compensation for the content they provide, and Meta's decision represents a clear dereliction of its commitment to the sustainability of Australian news media," she said.

"The Albanese government has sought advice from the ACCC and Treasury on options under the News Media Bargaining Code ... We expect digital platforms and industry to remain accountable for information they produce or host on their respective platforms."

Ms Rowland said the government was "committed to ensuring that Australians retain access to quality, public interest journalism; and are equipped with the skills and information they need to contextualise and interpret the information they encounter online".