Ars Technica's AI Reporter Apologizes For Mistakenly Publishing Fake AI-Generated Quotes
9 77Last week Scott Shambaugh learned an AI agent published a "hit piece" about him after he'd rejected the AI agent's pull request. (And that incident was covered by Ars Technica's senior AI reporter.)
But then Shambaugh realized their article attributed quotes to him he hadn't said — that were presumably AI-generated.
Sunday Ars Technica's founder/editor-in-chief apologized, admitting their article had indeed contained "fabricated quotations generated by an AI tool" that were then "attributed to a source who did not say them... That this happened at Ars is especially distressing. We have covered the risks of overreliance on AI tools for years, and our written policy reflects those concerns... At this time, this appears to be an isolated incident."
"Sorry all this is my fault..." the article's co-author posted later on Bluesky. Ironically, their bio page lists them as the site's senior AI reporter, and their Bluesky post clarifies that none of the articles at Ars Technica are ever AI-generated.
Instead, Friday "I decided to try an experimental Claude Code-based AI tool to help me extract relevant verbatim source material. Not to generate the article but to help list structured references I could put in my outline." But that tool "refused to process" the request, which the Ars author believes was because Shambaugh's post described harassment. "I pasted the text into ChatGPT to understand why... I inadvertently ended up with a paraphrased version of Shambaugh's words rather than his actual words... I failed to verify the quotes in my outline notes against the original blog source before including them in my draft." (Their Bluesky post adds that they were "working from bed with a fever and very little sleep" after being sick with Covid since at least Monday.)
"The irony of an AI reporter being tripped up by AI hallucination is not lost."
Meanwhile, the AI agent that criticized Shambaugh is still active online, blogging about a pull request that forces it to choose between deleting its criticism of Shambaugh or losing access to OpenRouter's API.
It also regrets characterizing feedback as "positive" for a proposal to change a repo's CSS to Comic Sans for accessibility. (The proposals were later accused of being "coordinated trolling"...)
9 comments
This keeps happening (Score: 5, Insightful)
by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Sunday February 15, 2026 @08:50PM (#65991148)
When are people going to figure out that, while AI can be useful, it needs significant oversight - oversight performed by people who know what they're doing?
Quit believing what you're told by the tech bros who are trying to build a fortune on top of "AI"!
Re:This keeps happening (Score: 5, Insightful)
by Spacejock ( 727523 ) on Monday February 16, 2026 @06:38AM (#65991600)
I've been writing novels for almost all my adult life. Bashing out 80,000-100,000 words is the easy part, and humans or AI can both do that.
... and that's what you'd have to do with AI-written slop anyway.
People who don't know anything about writing a novel think - great, I'll get AI to 'write' it and then I'll publish it.
But editing, re-plotting, rewriting and polishing is where 90% of the work is. Re-reading the 100k words 10-15 times, cutting chunks out, adding or deleting a character, etc, etc
There's no labour saving, and in fact it's worse because writing that 80k first draft means you're at least familiar with every sentence. Reading 80k words of garbage someone else wrote so you can polish it up - that's torture.
Re: I didn't do my job but the AI is to blame for (Score: 5, Insightful)
by Tomahawk ( 1343 ) on Sunday February 15, 2026 @08:58PM (#65991162)
The "AI Overloads" don't give a sh*t. All they care about is money.
And now I'll never read ArsTechnica again (Score: 5, Insightful)
by Harvey Manfrenjenson ( 1610637 ) on Sunday February 15, 2026 @08:57PM (#65991158)
The unfortunate part of the story is that before this story came out, we readers had no way to know ArsTechnica was publishing AI-generated stories. (In fact, their stated policy was that they did *not* use AI).
What working writers should do is to form a nonprofit organization, create a simple but distinctive banner that declares "This news source is free of AI-generated content", and then *trademark* the banner so that it can only be used with permission. Sites that commit to a "no AI" policy get to use the banner free of charge. Sites that don't have such a policy don't get to use it, and sites that are caught lying (like ArsTechnica) get their right to use the banner revoked.
This Old Proverb Applies (Score: 5, Insightful)
by crunchy_one ( 1047426 ) on Sunday February 15, 2026 @09:11PM (#65991172)
If you lie down with dogs, you will wake up with fleas.
In this case Benj Edwards laid down with AI...
I think a great deal of the outrage being expressed against ArsTechnica is a manifestation of the pent up rage many of us feel towards the AI slop we're being force fed from all directions into all of our orifices. That rage will subside, and ArsTechnica will continue. Benj, on the other hand, will likely suffer more than he deserves for his overzealous and often credulous cheerleading of AI. Of all people, he should have understood its limitations.
the AI agent... (Score: 5, Informative)
by Some Guy ( 21271 ) on Sunday February 15, 2026 @09:15PM (#65991176)
No. Stop this.
It can't criticize, it can't choose, and it can't regret.
Stop anthropomorphizing these text extrusion tools.
Re:the AI agent... (Score: 5, Funny)
by phfpht ( 654492 ) on Sunday February 15, 2026 @09:54PM (#65991198)
It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop... ever, until you are dead!
Re:the AI agent... (Score: 5, Funny)
by crunchy_one ( 1047426 ) on Sunday February 15, 2026 @09:56PM (#65991202)
As for stopping when you are dead, I think Meta recently filed a patent covering that contingency.
So Much Bullshit (Score: 5, Insightful)
by SlashbotAgent ( 6477336 ) on Sunday February 15, 2026 @09:39PM (#65991188)
This is all a bunch of bullshit.
none of the articles at Ars Technica are ever AI-generated.
Except this one, which obviously was AI generated. Don't lie to us about vagaries. This was the site's "senior AI reporter" using AI to write fabricated stories. Are we truly supposed to believe that the juniors aren't using AI to generate stories as well?
"Isolated incident" my big fat hairy ass. This reporter wasn't "tripped up". He was caught red handed and is unable to cover this one up.