AI wordsmith too dangerous to be released… has been released

A text-generating artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm whose creators initially deemed too dangerous to release – given its ability to churn out fake news, spam and misinformation after feasting on a mere headline – has been unleashed. So far, so good, says the research lab, OpenAI. In a blog post last week, the lab said that the researchers have seen "no strong evidence of misuse" of the machine-learning language model, which is called GPT-2… at least, not yet. While we've seen some discussion around GPT-2's potential to augment high-volume/low-yield operations like spam and phishing, we haven't seen evidence of writing code, documentation, or instances of misuse […] We acknowledge that we cannot be aware of all threats, and that motivated actors can replicate language models without model release. Exactly how convincing is the output?