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Join us to review and provide input for our water conservation goals!
Your input can help shape our conservation efforts and ensure a sustainable future for our community. Review the goals at engagebellingham.com and come to the Feb 25 Water Resources Advisory Board meeting at 6 p.m. if you would like to provide feedback. You can also provide feedback on our Engage Bellingham website at engagebellingham.com or by emailing [email protected] by Sunday, March 2.
A public communication post from the City of Bellingham, Washington has raised questions about the use of AI-generated government messaging. A paragraph from the city's Facebook post about local water conservation goals was found to match a ChatGPT response almost word for word. Screenshot comparison shows identical wording and structure.
The original post begins with: “Join us to review and provide input for our water conservation goals! Your input can help shape our conservation efforts and ensure a sustainable future for our community.” The exact same phrasing appears in a ChatGPT response generated from the prompt: “write a social media post about city water efficiency goals.”
Such AI text reuse is detected by tools like the AI Text Detector, which identify prompt-mirroring, repetitive structure, and generic language patterns typical of AI-generated content. Public institutions worldwide are increasingly adopting AI tools, but failing to disclose AI usage can raise transparency and trust concerns among citizens. Detecting AI involvement in official communication is now an essential part of media literacy.
