TaggartWhat's going on here? The matplotlib maintainer this story is about correctly notes that all the quotes from his post in the article are made up.
UPDATE: Link was pulled; see below.
UPDATE: They pulled the story, but I had it up and had SingleFile in my browser, so: https://mttaggart.neocities.org/ars-whoopsie
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Putting this here so all can see it. Ars forum thread where the pull and investigation are mentioned: https://arstechnica.com/civis/threads/journalistic-standards.1511650/
Journalistic standards?
Hi folks, Since Ars is apparently posting partially or fully AI generated articles now, I have to ask - is this going to be a continued policy going forward? That is, will Ars be officially publishing AI generated content from now on? If so, will it be marked? This is obviously pretty concerning.
The Orange Theme@mttaggart Locking the comments seems pretty... bad? I mean, one of their authors generated slop, and one of their editors approved slop. Is it more complicated or...? (I'm being a little flippant, but this is a terrible look for Ars already.)
@theorangetheme I think the lock might be SOP for a pulled story. And mods tend not to like rampant speculation.
Aliide@mttaggart @theorangetheme I'm genuinely confused about how this was allowed to happen. I tend to assume Ars has better editorial processes than some of the places I've worked, and both writers have long-term specialisations. My most charitable explanation is that someone created a version that they though would be funny and that was accidentally published. Very curious to see what their investigation yields.
Seems like it very much was the consequence of writers using AI ..!
Edit: or potentially an editor, would be good if they specified which — and either way, it slipped through the editorial process.
