Freightos, AI and a case of mistaken identity

© Marc Bruxelle |

The Loadstar has written a fair bit on the ‘hallucinations’ of AI – and why it is not a reliable source. Which is why we should have done better in a recent article on Freightos’ results. 

Trying to find out the exact shareholdings of a company can be difficult – even with a listed company such as Freightos. Filings are not necessarily up to date, and it can be hard to determine recent sales and acquisitions of shares.

So we reached for AI, which can trawl and come up with an answer. In fact, Al can be a handy tool for journalists looking to find facts as it can search through Google and other sites far faster. 

However, in this instance, AI hallucinated. The site finchat.io revealed – somewhat surprisingly – that Guillaume Halleux, former head of Qatar Airways Cargo, was apparently the second-largest shareholder of Freightos, with a 9.3% stake valued at more than $12m. 

That surprise should of course have triggered us to check with Freightos, but with the words there in black and white, it came across as fact – and next to it was an entry for QR. Big mistake. AI had confused Qatar Airways with Mr Halleux. That stake is, in fact, held by QR. 

It has been a good lesson for us. We should have known better, not only because we have written and published articles on the challenges of using AI, but also because we have developed an AI tool in-house that, rather brilliantly, can give us the minutiae of financial reports in a few seconds.

But we’ve also seen that when it can’t find the answer we are looking for, instead of saying it doesn’t know, it simply makes something up. There must always be a fact check of the fact dispenser. 

We apologise to Freightos – which, by the way, was extremely polite in its note correcting us – and Mr Halleux, and hope they understand that this was a learning experience for us, as we come to terms with the benefits – and disadvantages – of AI.