Editors of the National Contract Management Association (NCMA)’s Contract Management recently published a cover image and story generated by artificial intelligence: “AI is Coming for Contracting.” Open AI’s DALL-E2 created the cover image and the Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 (GPT3) model—a neural network machine learning model trained using internet data to generate any type of text—wrote the cover story, but not without a few snafus.

When asked to write about the use of robotic process automation in government and provide web links and citations, “GPT-3 gave me 50 or more very official-sounding system names complete with acronyms, military service sponsors, and website links. All were completely fictitious,” said John Ferry, CEO of Trenchant Analytics (TAC), which is prototyping an AI-powered contract writing application, AcqBot, for the Department of Defense. Ferry prompted DALL-E2 to produce the cover illustration and article.

Read more about the AI publication collaboration in NCMA’s news release.