Traditional Publishers Hallucinate More Than AI Systems
May 28, 2025
Just the dinobaby operating without Copilot or its ilk.
I sincerely hope that the information presented in “Major Papers Publish AI-Hallucinated Summer Reading List Of Nonexistent Books.” The components of this “real” news story are:
- A big time newspaper syndicator
- A “real” journalist / writer allegedly named Marco Buscaglia
- Smart software bubbling with the type of AI goodness output by Google-type outfits desperate to make their big bets on smart software pay off
- Humans who check “facts”— real or hallucinated.
Blend these together in an information process like that operated at the Sun-Times in the city with big shoulders and what do you get:
In an embarrassing episode that will help aggravate society’s uneasy relationship with artificial intelligence, the Chicago Sun-Times, Philadelphia Inquirer and other newspapers around the country published a summer-reading list where most of the books were entirely made up by ChatGPT. The article was licensed content provided by King Features Syndicate, a subsidiary of Hearst Newspapers. Initial reporting of the bogus list focused on the Sun-Times, which two months earlier announced that 20% of its staff had accepted buyouts as the paper staggers under a dying business model. However, several other newspapers also ran the syndicated article, which was part of a package of summer-themed content called "Heat Index."
What happened? The editorial process and the “real” journalist did their work. The editorial process involved using smart software to create a list of must-read books. The real journalist converted the raw list into a formatted presentation of books you, gentle reader, must consume whilst reclining in a beach lounger or crunched into a customer-first airplane seat.
The cited write up explains the clip twixt cup and lip or lips:
As the scandal quickly made waves across traditional and social media, the Sun-Times — which not-so-accurately bills itself as "The Hardest-Working Paper in America" — raced to apologize while also trying to distance itself from the work. “This is licensed content that was not created by, or approved by, the Sun-Times newsroom, but it is unacceptable for any content we provide to our readers to be inaccurate,” a spokesperson said. In a separate post to its website, the paper said, "This should be a learning moment for all of journalism.” Meanwhile, the Inquirer’s CEO Lisa Hughes told The Atlantic, "Using artificial intelligence to produce content, as was apparently the case with some of the Heat Index material, is a violation of our own internal policies and a serious breach.”
The kindergarten smush up inspires me to offer several observations:
- Editorial processes require editors who pay attention, know or check facts, and think about how to serve their readers
- Writers need to do old-fashioned work like read books, check with sources likely to be sort of correct, and invest time in their efforts
- Readers need to recognize that this type of information baloney can be weaponized. Shaping will do far more harm than give me a good laugh.
Outstanding. My sources tell me that the “real” news about this hallucinating shirk off is mostly accurate.
Stephen E Arnold, May 28, 2025
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