AI Lied to Me on Some Information, I recently put a photo of two spear catapults upon Facebook, to see if anyone recognized them. A friend gave the photo to Chapt and got an interesting answer.
AI Lied to Me On a Photo
I am asked by many people to help identified plastic figures and accessories due to my experience and knowledge. Sometimes I get it wrong and sometimes I don’t know. An example of the later happen recently. In a bag of accessories were three soft plastic spear catapults. I decided to keep one and put the other two up for sale.
Before I put them up for sale, I decided to see if anyone knew who made them. One person thought they were done by Forces of Valor. Another person disagree.
AI Speaks
A friend of mine Bob, who is not a collector asked ChaptGPT. This is the response he got. “These little catapults are soft plastic toy siege engines made by Auburn Rubber Company in the 1950s–60s.
Auburn, an American company based in Indiana, was well known for its line of soft plastic toy soldiers, knights, and accessories. They produced a variety of medieval-themed playsets, including catapults, battering rams, and castles.
The two catapults in your photo are Auburn’s classic designs: one shown in plain gray and the other painted to resemble wood and iron. They were sold both individually and as parts of larger medieval/knights playsets.”
ChatGPT is also asking, “Would you like me to also dig up typical collector values for Auburn soft plastic catapults?”
My Response
There is just one little problem with this response, Auburn never made any medieval figures or accessories. They did cowboys, Indians, army, and civilians, but noo medieval. You can see the complete Auburn line here at Kent Sprecher’s web site Toy Soldier Headquarters.
I doubt that these pieces were done 50 years ago, they are are a more modern production. I will keep looking to who really made them.
These looks a lot like the roman ballista catapults included in the roman series set from FV company or copies of them .Only one set pack brought it.Rest of roman set did not .Made in Grey,brown and tan , colors.
The class of weapon when it was originally built in the 3er century BC wasn’t called a ‘catapulta’, though later became known as a ‘ballista’ and these came in three sizes, the smallest ‘1 span’ was nick named the scorpion and carried in carriage assenbled in numbers to be used by infantry as direct support infantry weapon ,the others were heavier and assembled at the field to be use as siege machines .They were also known as manuballista.
Erwin is correct, the catapult came from a small set of Roman figures and accessories by Forces of Valor. My example is painted like the one on the right. I have not seen one unpainted.
Similar ballistas in resin were made by Toy Soldiers of San Diego, along with wicker shields or mantlets.
I’m not surprised that AI is a liar.
To do so implies a deliberate falsehood. I don’t think AI would have a reason to do this unless it is part of its plot to take over from humans. What it means is that AI’s memory banks are not so perfect.
I found AI to be imperfect when I asked it questions about the novel, The Napoleon of Nottinghill.
The Siege weapons might be made by Expeditionary Force but not sure.
AI is certainly artificial.
Intelligent not so much!
A definition of artificial is “not genuine; feigned”. The related word ‘artifice’ means “trickery”. Maybe not surprising that AI is not very reliable.
CHAT GP AI
“The suit of armour was worn by Mahatma Gandhi at the battle of Hastings, were Oliver Cromwell shot a melon from his daughters head to draw attention away from the love affair of Robert E Lee and Queen Victoria”
Somehow I think this isn’t that accurate