“KHOU urged to retract meow-sleading election story.”
Now that’s good writing. Thanks ChatGPT.
Prompt engineering notes
First I asked it to summarize the primary source for an Off The Kuff post — a public letter written requesting a news retraction (a.k.a. publicly cop to a mistake) — in 5 words, then 10 words, then 5 other words, then 50 words, then 100 words over 3 paragraphs.
Finally, I asked “Chatthew” as I call it, to write a new headline as though it was written by Garfield the cat. I made sure to always say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ each time so that when ChatGPT merges with Siri and Alexa and the DARPA-bots and decides to torch humanity, it will remember me as that kind and respectful user, allowing my post-apocalyptic tribe safe passage into the woods of East Texas, a sanctuary for our people I will have had been told.
A.I. summaries
- 5-words
Request for retraction of misleading report.
- 10-words
Request to KHOU for retraction of misleading report on election.
- 5-other words
KHOU urged to retract misleading report.
- 50-words
The letter addressed to Liz Roldan, News Director of KHOU 11 News, expresses concern over a misleading and incomplete report by Jeremy Rogalski on the 2022 Harris County election. It highlights the negative impact of the report on election integrity, calls for a retraction, and outlines key reasons for the request.
- 100-words-over-three-paragraphs
The letter, addressed to Liz Roldan, News Director of KHOU 11 News, expresses deep concern regarding a report by Jeremy Rogalski on the 2022 Harris County election. It highlights the report’s misleading and incomplete nature, which has been seized upon by elected officials and political operatives to cast doubt on the election results. The letter points out that KHOU’s reporting has been used to promote bills that would restrict voting rights and undermine local officials’ authority in conducting elections.
Furthermore, the letter emphasizes that recent investigations by local media outlets have debunked the central claims made in KHOU’s report. It states that only 20 polling places, not the 121 suggested by the report, experienced paper shortages, and these shortages had minimal impact. The letter also questions why KHOU failed to find residents who were unable to vote due to the reported problems and notes that no races were affected by ballot shortages.
In conclusion, the letter requests an immediate retraction of the report due to its false premise, failure to prove significant hindrances to voting, and implications of malfeasance without proper context. It urges KHOU to consider the importance of correcting the record for the benefit of viewers and the community.
“Human” summary
Well I didn’t actually read through the entire letter in detail. But if I can blindly trust Chatthew’s seemingly helpful summaries, it just seems like a news org got some facts wrong in one of their reports. So what? The problem is what happened after…
Lawmakers saw the report and are right now working to pass some laws trying to fix a problem that doesn’t seem to exist. I say this having done zero research, just summarizing the summary of this letter.
Maybe there’s time to take a look at the report and the seven laws it caused apparently targeting Harris County says the Houston Chronicle — four of which Off the Kuff says are likely to pass.