Michael Schumacher’s family are to sue a German gossip magazine for publishing an “interview” with the Formula One rally driver, based on answers generated by an artificial intelligence chatbot.
Flagged as a “world sensation”, German magazine Die Aktuelle splashed on its front cover what it called “the first interview” with Michael Schumacher since he suffered brain damage during a December 2013 skiing accident.
Inside, the “interview”, spread over two pages, was headlined: “My life has changed completely.”
In the third-last paragraph, the magazine concedes: “The interview was in the internet. On a page that has to do with Artificial Intelligence.”
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The magazine appears to have used online service character.ai, which allows users “chat” with well-known figures, from Elon Musk to Marilyn Monroe, with answers generated from material stored by the AI system.
But Die Aktuelle is convinced there is more to it than a regurgitated Wikipedia page. “How does this AI know the personal background? About marriage, children and illnesses? Someone must have supplied the information! Was it Schumi himself who typed in the information from his sickbed?”
The answer from Schumacher’s family? No, this is not Michael Schumacher but an AI chatbot. The answers are mostly banal speculation on known facts about his months in an artificial coma and slow recovery after his skiing accident.
“My wife and my children were a blessing for me and without them I wouldn’t have made it,” said the AI chatbot, responding to unpublished questions. “Naturally they are all very sad about how everything has happened but, sadly, that is life and I have to cope sometimes with things not going so well.”
The AI chatbot insists that “Michael Schumacher” is “doing much better than in years. With my team I can now stand independently and even, slowly, walk a few steps.”
Things will never be the same as before the accident, the chatbot adds, “but that doesn’t stop me from fighting on”.
This is not the Schumachers’s first run-in with Die Aktuelle. In 2014 the magazine ran a cover story of Michael and his wife Corinna and the headline “Awake”, flagging an article inside about other people who have woken up from a coma.
A year later the magazine claimed a “new love” had entered Corinna’s life on its cover, while the article inside concerned their daughter Gina.
In 2017 a Hamburg court ordered rival gossip magazine Bunte pay the Schumachers €50,000 in damages after it claimed, in a December 2015 issue: “More than a Christmas miracle – Michael Schumacher can walk once more.”
The seven-time Formula One world champion is believed to be receiving round-the-clock care at the family home in Switzerland. Corinna Schumacher has spoken on a few, rare occasions about her husband’s condition, most recently at the end of a 2021 Netflix documentary.
“Michael is here. Different, but he’s here, and that gives us strength, I find,” she said. “We’re together. We live together at home. We do therapy. We do everything we can to make Michael better and to make sure he’s comfortable.”
The Schumacher family have the lawyers, the means and, in Germany, the privacy laws to hit back against speculative press reports.
According to Corinna Schumacher: “Michael always protected us, and now we are protecting Michael.”
Their son Mick was a F1 driver in 2021 and 2022 but is currently without a race seat. Asked if he follows his son’s career, the AI Schumacher chatbot replied: “Of course ... my son has followed in my footsteps with great skill.”
The “interview” has caused uproar in Germany, with one media platform describing it as “too dumb to be true”.
“One shouldn’t expect too much from the gossip magazine Die Aktuelle and its editorial team,” it said, noting its long history of gaining attention through “untruthful and manipulated” stories. “But this story is of noteworthy cheekiness.”
It noted that the cover strap line – “it sounds deceptively real” – may have been a trick to avoid legal action later.
Anyone who logs on to the character.ai platform is informed upfront about what to expect from the website: “Everything characters say is made up. Don’t trust everything they say or take them too seriously.”
Regardless of whether this ends up in court, the made-up Schumacher story – and its tantalising question of whether the driver is feeding a gossip magazine quotes via an AI internet platform – has been good for sales. In several Berlin kiosks, the current issue of Die Aktuelle was sold out.
