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In January 2023, CNET disclosed that it had paused an internal AI-writing tool after errors surfaced in its personal-finance explainers. The mistakes were not obscure technicalities: one article mixed up interest earned with an account’s total balance, misstated how auto-loan interest works, and described certificate-of-deposit compounding incorrectly. Later, WIRED reported that CNET had issued corrections on 41 of the 77 AI-assisted stories it had published.
What errors appeared in CNET’s AI-assisted finance explainer?
Futurism reported several specific mistakes in a CNET explainer about compound interest. The most basic was a confusion between the money deposited and the interest earned. For a $10,000 deposit earning 3 percent annual interest over one year, the correction reported by Futurism and The Washington Post put the interest at $300. The resulting $10,300 is the account balance, including the original deposit—not the amount earned as interest.
Michael Dowling, associate dean and professor of finance at Dublin City University Business School, told Futurism: “It is simply not correct, or common practice, to say that you have ‘earned’ both the principal sum and the interest.”
The auto-loan example
Futurism also reported that the article described a $25,000 auto loan at 4 percent as generating a flat $1,000 in interest each year. That phrasing was misleading: it treated the original loan amount as though it remained the amount on which interest was calculated throughout repayment. Futurism and the experts it interviewed criticized the explanation; this account does not independently recalculate a particular loan.
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The certificate-of-deposit example
The explainer also claimed that a one-year certificate of deposit compounds only when it reaches maturity. Futurism pointed to examples of one-year CDs that compound daily or monthly. The compounding schedule depends on the CD’s terms, so a one-year term alone does not establish that interest compounds only at the end.
APR and APY
CNET’s correction also addressed confusion between annual percentage rate (APR) and annual percentage yield (APY). These labels are not interchangeable: APY reflects the effect of compounding, while APR generally expresses an annual rate without that compounding effect. The correction matters because a comparison or explanation can give readers the wrong impression if it blurs the two.
How many CNET AI articles were corrected?
CNET editor-in-chief Connie Guglielmo said the publication had published 77 AI-assisted stories since November, according to CBS News/CNN’s January 2023 report. WIRED later reported that CNET issued corrections on 41 of those 77 articles and that more than half contained factual errors. The 41 figure is WIRED’s reporting, not a count in Futurism’s initial article.
Those numbers describe the reported CNET corpus and its correction record; they are not a general error rate for AI-written journalism. The sources do not provide a breakdown of how many corrections were minor versus substantial.
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What editorial process did CNET say it used?
Guglielmo said editors created outlines, expanded and edited AI-generated drafts, and fact-checked the resulting stories. After Futurism identified errors in the compound-interest explainer, CNET audited its AI-assisted work, published corrections, and said it paused use of the tool, as reported by CBS News/CNN.
The documented contrast is important: CNET described a human-involved workflow, but factual errors still reached publication. The episode does not establish why each individual mistake escaped review. UC Berkeley professor Hany Farid told The Washington Post that he wondered whether authoritative-sounding AI prose had led editors to lower their guard. That was a proposed explanation, not a demonstrated finding about the editors’ decisions.
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How did CNET’s disclosure change?
Initial disclosure around AI-assisted stories drew scrutiny during the episode. Afterward, CNET added a more prominent notice to AI-assisted pieces under review, according to Futurism. The Washington Post quoted a CNET correction notice saying, “we are currently reviewing this story for accuracy,” and “if we find errors, we will update and issue corrections.”
Disclosure helps readers understand how a story was produced, but it does not substitute for accurate reporting or review. In this case, the practical issue was that readers encountered errors in financial explanations despite the editing and fact-checking process CNET said it had in place.
Quick Recap
What the episode does—and does not—show
- It shows: an AI-assisted workflow at one newsroom produced published finance copy with errors about interest, loan calculations, CD compounding, and APR versus APY.
- It shows: CNET said human editors shaped and checked the drafts, then audited the work and paused the tool after the errors were reported.
- It does not show: that every newsroom using AI will have the same results, or that the reported CNET correction count represents a general AI-journalism error rate.
- It does not establish: CNET’s current AI policy. The reporting cited here concerns its 2023 experiment.
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