Earlier this week, PCWorld published a roundup of Windows 12 rumors translated from PCWelt that does not meet our editorial standards. We’re deeply embarrassed by it, and I personally apologize that the article was published. It should not have been, but we’re keeping the article live (with an editor’s note at the top) so it remains in the public record.
Windows Central published a response detailing its errors. Thanks for keeping us accountable, guys — genuinely. In the same spirit of accountability, I want to explain how this happened, and what we’re doing to ensure a mistake like this never occurs again.
Let’s start by discussing how PCWorld handles translated articles, and then I’ll dive into the issues with the article itself.
Journalistic integrity in this day and age? Hasn’t that been outlawed yet?
It made Microsoft look bad.
They left out “The Microsoft marketing team called us and complained about our last article. We were so compelled by their plight that we decided to correct ourselves.”
It seems crazy to me for journalists to trust machine/AI translated articles enough to use as a source in their own articles.
I’ve always seen them as things to treat as unreliable, but something to use when there’s no other options available and to get a gist of what it might be about.
If using them as citation I’d need a native speaker to confirm content before being confident enough to include it if I were a journalist.
There’s another alternative: not reporting it as fact, butbeing open about the degree of certainty and the methodology.
“Someone says”, “rumor”, and “uncertain automated translation” don’t make for very convincing sources or journalistic credibility, of course. But being open about context does moreso than hiding it.
AI is now the dog you blame for your flatulence.
Next time I shit in my bosses coffee I’ll blame AI. After all he required me to use it more.
“AI made me do it.”
You telling me, they didn’t have anyone with German skills reviewing their translation prior to publication?
Perfect!
See the same people that circle jerked over that article, now try and act like they knew it was fake all along.
we accidentally windows 12
It could happen to you.
Article did not provide any specific corrections. Is windows 12 subscription only or not?
They basically retracted the article. There’s no windows 12.
