Police squash fears about an article stating there was a local Christmas Day murder

A town in New Jersey was thrown into disarray when an article began to circle about a murder on Christmas Day.

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The article began to make the rounds locally through the news aggregation website NewsBreak and claimed that a murder had occurred in the Southern New Jersey town of Bridgeton on Christmas Day. Local authorities have since come out to announce the article was "entirely false" and was generated by an AI-powered tool. Bridgeton Police Department wrote in a Facebook post that nothing even similar to what the story claimed occurred on or around Christmas, even going as far to say "even in recent memory for the area".

The article has since been removed from NewsBreak, while its existence, along with its short-lived impact, has raised some questions about AI-generated content, such as outlets failing to inform viewers that the story they are reading is generated by an AI-powered tool. These outlets are simply confusing the masses within an industry that is already infamously mistrusted, per Futurism.

"Nothing even similar to this story occurred on or around Christmas, or even in recent memory for the area they described," the Bridgeton Police Department's post explains. "The article does not have an author and states at the bottom, 'This post includes content assisted by AI tools. This content was assisted by AI and may contain errors. Please verify critical information with trusted sources.'"