BrikoXFeb 15

Ars Technica Pulls Article With AI Fabricated Quotes About AI Generated Article

https://lemmy.zip/post/59177474

Ars Technica Pulls Article With AI Fabricated Quotes About AI Generated Article - Lemmy.zip

> A story about an AI generated article contained fabricated, AI generated quotes. Archived version: https://archive.is/20260215215759/https://www.404media.co/ars-technica-pulls-article-with-ai-fabricated-quotes-about-ai-generated-article/ [https://archive.is/20260215215759/https://www.404media.co/ars-technica-pulls-article-with-ai-fabricated-quotes-about-ai-generated-article/]

Show threadterminatortwoFeb 16

What a shame. I’ve subscribed to ars for years. Their response was disappointing, it doesn’t talk about what happened and what they’re doing to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Nothing about how they handled them makes me trust that they won’t do it again.

Show threadooternessFeb 16
I wouldn’t go that far. The article was posted Friday afternoon, and blew up over the weekend. Once the problem was known, the article was taken down quickly. We’ll see what happens when the editorial staff is back in the office in Monday.
Show threadterminatortwo
They already posted their response: https://arstechnica.com/staff/2026/02/editors-note-retraction-of-article-containing-fabricated-quotations/
Editor’s Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations

We are reinforcing our editorial standards following this incident.

Ars Technica
Feb 16 at 12:18amWeb
Show threadooternessFeb 16
Ah, that’s new from this morning. Seems I was a few hours out of date.
Show threadryperFeb 16
Benj Edwards, one of the authors of the offending article, has posted an explanation, taking the blame and clearing his co-author.
Benj Edwards (@benjedwards.com)

Sorry all this is my fault; and speculation has grown worse because I have been sick in bed with a high fever and unable to reliably address it (still am sick) I was told by management not to comment until they did. Here is my statement in images below https://arstechnica.com/staff/2026/02/editors-note-retraction-of-article-containing-fabricated-quotations/

Bluesky Social
Show threadunderiskFeb 16

So he used an AI tool to “organize” references and it hallucinated crap that made it into the human-written article because he never reviewed the output for accuracy.

This guy writes about AI for a living, he knows it hallucinates, and he even acknowledges the irony but never explains why he thought experimenting with AI was a good idea to begin with. Am I supposed to assume his judgment was impaired by being sick?

Show threadterminatortwoFeb 16

Thanks for linking this. I hope ars makes it more visible. I’ll have to take Benj’s word.

That’s the thing with trust, hard to build, easy to burn.