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Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →CNET’s AI-assisted personal-finance explainers published errors about compound interest, auto-loan interest and certificates of deposit. In January 2023, CNET said it had published 77 AI-assisted stories since November, audited them after the mistakes were reported, issued corrections and paused use of its writing tool. WIRED later reported that 41 of the 77 stories received corrections. These figures describe CNET’s 2023 experiment—not its current AI policy.
What errors appeared in CNET’s AI-assisted finance explainer?
Futurism reported errors in a CNET explainer about compound interest. The most basic was a mix-up between an account’s total balance and the interest earned. On a $10,000 deposit earning 3 percent annual interest for one year, the interest is $300; $10,300 is the balance including the original deposit. The correction to the story clarified that distinction. Futurism’s report and The Washington Post’s account of the correction described the error.
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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.” Principal is the money deposited or borrowed; interest is the additional amount paid or earned under the terms of the account or loan.
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Futurism also highlighted a passage describing a $25,000 auto loan at 4 percent as generating a flat $1,000 in annual interest. That description treats the calculation as if the entire original balance remained outstanding for the year. It does not account for a typical installment loan’s changing balance as payments reduce principal. Futurism’s critique identified the description as misleading; this article does not independently calculate a loan’s payment schedule.
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The certificate-of-deposit claim
The explainer also claimed that a one-year certificate of deposit (CD) compounds only at maturity. Futurism pointed to examples of one-year CDs that compound daily or monthly. The compounding schedule depends on the specific account’s terms, so a one-year term alone does not establish that interest compounds only once, at maturity.
APR and APY
CNET’s correction also addressed confusion between annual percentage rate (APR) and annual percentage yield (APY). They are not interchangeable labels: APR expresses an annualized rate, while APY reflects the effect of compounding on an annual yield. The exact terms and disclosure conventions depend on the financial product, so readers should check the account or loan documents rather than infer a calculation from a headline rate.
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What CNET said its editorial process was
In a January 2023 account reported by CBS News/CNN, CNET editor-in-chief Connie Guglielmo said the publication had produced 77 AI-assisted stories since November. She described a process in which editors created outlines, expanded and edited drafts, and fact-checked them. After Futurism identified errors in the compound-interest explainer, CNET audited the work, published corrections and said it had paused use of the tool. CBS News/CNN’s report documents CNET’s account of the workflow and response.
The episode matters because the stated safeguards did not prevent errors from reaching readers. That does not show that every newsroom’s use of AI will produce the same result; it shows that naming human review as part of a process is not, on its own, evidence that the published work is accurate.
How many of the stories were corrected?
WIRED later reported that CNET issued corrections on 41 of the 77 AI-written stories—more than half of the corpus. The 41 figure comes from WIRED’s later reporting, not Futurism’s original error-focused article. The available reports do not provide a breakdown of how many corrections involved major factual errors versus smaller changes, so the count should not be read as a measure of equal severity across all 41 stories. WIRED’s report also covers staff response to the experiment.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What the episode showed about disclosure and review
The reporting also raised questions about how visible AI involvement was to readers. CNET added a more prominent disclosure after scrutiny, while the earlier labeling was less visible, according to contemporary coverage. A disclosure can tell readers how a story was produced; it cannot replace checking whether its arithmetic, terminology and claims are correct.
Hany Farid, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, suggested that authoritative-sounding prose may have affected the review: “I wonder if the seemingly authoritative AI voice led to the editors lowering their guard,” he told The Washington Post, “and [were] less careful than they may have been with a human journalist’s writing.” That was Farid’s interpretation, not a demonstrated explanation for how each error passed review. The Washington Post’s contemporary coverage also quoted CNET’s notice that it was reviewing the story for accuracy and would update and issue corrections if it found errors.
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