A respectable newspaper from Chicago is exposed with content created by artificial intelligence

The summer is knocking on the door and the time of the popular genre media has come to recommend a list of books on vacation. The American Chicago Sun-Times exposed itself, directing its readers to titles that … never existed.

The editorial board of the Illinois edition apologized and confirmed that the article was prepared by a freelance journalist by a partner organization with the help of artificial intelligence.

This is a classic example of how AI « hallucins » – when it is not reached basic information or the task is not formulated enough, the model does not respond with « I don’t know » or « I have no data », but begins to create a fictional reality. In this case, the titles, the fruit of the software phantasmagoria are attached to real authors.

Of the 15 titles, the reader reaches the first real one on the spot 11 – the classics of 1954. « Good afternoon, Sadness » by Francoise Sagan. Down is also a « grinding » by Ian McUwan.

Isabiel Allende is attributed to the non -existent work Tidewater Dreams. Each title is accompanied by a brief description of the work, and this is presented as « a saga for several generations, the action of which is developing in a coastal city where magical realism meets ecological activism » and « tells how a family confronts increasing levels of the sea as it discovers deeply buried secrets. »

Readers also pay attention to other parts of the summer gadget of the newspaper, the Guardian says. Thus, the article « Trends in Summer Eating » was cited by an anthropologist studying this topic under the name Catherine Furst of Cornell University. But the demand in the higher education registers does not confirm the existence of such a scientist.

There is a quoted editor from the Firepitbase.com site for ideas on how to beautify the backyard. There is no such site.

The problem doesn’t stop here. The creator of a significant part of the Chicago summer gadget seems to have prepared such content for several editions in the country, because the book list also appeared in Philadelphia Inquirer.