AI Tries To Write The News: Rap star Post Malone helps set up HESCO barriers and other ‘sightings’
- Mark Sabbatini
- 6 hours ago
- 3 min read
Media in Alaska and beyond runs wild with reports and fake images of performer doing many improbable things in many improbable spots in The Last Frontier
By Mark Sabbatini
Juneau Independent
Editor’s note: While AI Tries To Write The News originated as a feature where a commercial AI blog tool is used to write articles about recent local events to show how such content compares to human-written news stories, we’re increasingly finding such content already out there. Accordingly, we’ll be focusing on a mix of those two approaches going forward.
Rumors of celebrity sightings are so passé, it seems. Nowadays people seem compelled to share "evidence" of their sightings — sometimes and sometimes not acknowledging their proof is a spoof.
Media in Alaska and elsewhere (along with social media, naturally) went wild after rap star Post Malone dropped by a gas station in the Fairbanks area about a week ago, with legitimate photos of him with employees and at least one fan showing up on Facebook.
That led to, among other things, a TMZ headline in all-caps declaring "POST MALONE TAKES ON THE LAST FRONTIER."
"Word has already traveled quickly in the small town of Fairbanks (Alaska's second-largest city)...and citizens have started flooding the city's Facebook page with A.I. and photoshopped pictures of Posty all over town —including one depicting Malone throwing back a beer while a sasquatch with Shane Gillis' face walks through the forest behind him," the celebrity news website reported in an April 16 post.
Anchorage-based KTUU published a similar, if less exclamatory, report noting "Malone has allegedly been seen in North Pole as well. Much of the excitement has turned to rumors of artificial intelligence being used in photos to create a sensation."
Alaskans outside that part of the Interior weren't content to be mere spectators in the spectacle. AI-generated images show him in a full-state virtual tour ranging from drinking a beer at The Rock sculpture in Ketchikan to playing with a walrus near Nome.
A "tracking map" posted April 18 on Facebook by Homer resident Tim Hatfield "shows" Post Malone making stops in all parts of the date, with plenty of commentators adding their own "pictures."
Some posters are, not surprisingly, using the images and memes to promote everything from tourist sites to events.
"If the rumors are true and Post Malone is in Juneau don't you think he would come join us for a night of fights at the AK BEAT DOWN?!! We are positive he would!!" the Juneau boxing and MMA entity declared in an April 18 post on its Facebook page.
A commenter on the post helpfully "observed" that "he’s helping us with Hesco barriers right now."
Unlike some AI-generated content trying to pass itself off as legitimate, most of the Post Malone "sightings" are seemingly tongue-in-cheek by those posting them. But that isn’t keeping a few people from taking them seriously, or least questioning if what they’re seeing is real.
"First response JEALOUS; second response That darn AI!" one commenter wrote in response to a Facebook post showing Post Malone with a juvenile fin whale that beached last November in Anchorage. Comments by others included "Im so confused, what trend did I just walk into" and "Damn that whale is STILL THERE?"
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at editor@juneauindependent.com or (907) 957-2306.
