Newspapers' AI-generated summer reading list recommends nonexistent books
NEW YORK — The recommended reading list contained some works of fiction. It also contained some works that were, in fact, actually fictional.
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The content distributor King Features says it has fired a writer who used artificial intelligence to produce a story on summer reading suggestions that contained books that didn't exist.
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The list appeared in Heat Index: Your Guide to the Best of Summer, a special section distributed in Sunday's Chicago Sun-Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer last week.
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More than half of the books listed were fake, according to the piece's author, Marco Buscaglia, who admitted to using AI for help in his research but didn't double-check what it produced. 'A really stupid error on my part,' Buscaglia wrote on his Facebook page.
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'The Heat Index summer supplement was created by a freelance contract creator who used AI in its story development without disclosing the use of AI,' the syndicators King Features said in a statement, noting it has a strict policy against using AI to create material. Only the Sun-Times and Inquirer have used the supplement, the organization said.
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Among the summer reading suggestions was The Last Algorithm by Andy Weir, described as 'a science-driven thriller following a programmer who discovers an AI system has developed consciousness' and been secretly influencing world events. Nightshade Market, by Min Jin Lee, was said to be a 'riveting tale set in Seoul's underground economy.'
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Both authors are real, but the books aren't. 'I have not written and will not be writing a novel called Nightshade Market,' Lee posted on X.
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The Sun-Times said it was investigating whether any other inaccurate information was included in the Heat Index supplement, and reviewing its relationships with other content partners.
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'We are in a moment of great transformation in journalism and technology, and at the same time our industry continues to be besieged by business challenges,' the newspaper said. 'This should be a learning moment for all journalism organizations: Our work is valued — and valuable — because of the humanity behind it.'
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Winnipeg Free Press
24-05-2025
- Winnipeg Free Press
Read it and weep — AI-generated fictional book list an uncomfortable reality
Opinion Last weekend, the Chicago Sun-Times released a summer reading list that included hot new titles from Min Jin Lee, Andy Weir, Maggie O'Farrell and Percival Everett. The only problem? Ten of the 15 suggested books did not exist. The book titles and their capsule descriptions were generated by artificial intelligence. These fake beach reads weren't in the newspaper proper. They were part of a syndicated summertime-lifestyle insert filled with tips and advice on food, drink and things to do. Still, that an error this egregious would be published under the auspices of a venerable big-city newspaper is deeply discouraging. The list has since become an online joke, a scandalous news story and a blinking-red-light warning about the stresses facing legacy media. There was no byline for this material, but the website 404 Media tracked it back to Marco Buscaglia, a real — and clearly fallible — person tasked with delivering almost all of the 64-page spread for King Features, which licensed the content to the Sun-Times and another major newspaper, the Philadelphia Inquirer. In a frank email to NPR, freelancer Buscaglia admitted to relying on generative AI. 'Huge mistake on my part and has nothing to do with the Sun-Times,' he wrote. 'They trust that the content they purchase is accurate and I betrayed that trust. It's on me 100 per cent.' But even if the initial mistake was Buscaglia's, it was compounded by the Sun-Times' reckless lack of institutional oversight. These non-existent books could have been caught with a quick once-over by any vaguely literary editor. And while the Sun-Times is currently — and rightly — taking heat, this AI fiasco points to larger, industry-wide problems, as demographic shifts, technological changes, financial constraints and chronic understaffing lead to an increasing reliance on cheap listicles, generic 'content creation' and ChatGPT slop. Putting human culpability to one side, though, maybe the scariest takeaway here is that this AI-generated book list is actually kind of swell (I mean, apart from being totally made-up). The non-human prose is, for the most part, smoothly and weirdly plausible, with a queasy knack for sensing what readers want and then supplying it. That's what makes it so dangerous. AI is clearly keyed into our collective reading habits. We love 'sprawling multigenerational sagas' and 'compelling character development' and things going wrong when guests with buried secrets are stranded on a remote vacation island. AI also knows what's keeping us up at night — climate change, environmental devastation and things like drought, Category 5 hurricanes and endangered bird migrations. Even knowing the list was phony, I have to admit the AI pandering got to me. Isabel Allende mixing up eco-anxiety and magic realism? Yes, please! Taylor Jenkins Reid writing about shenanigans in the art world? Sign me up! Jin Min Lee exploring class, gender and the underground economy at an illegal night market in Seoul? Sure! Percival Everett, who just snagged a Pulitzer for James, delivering a satirical take on a 'near-future American West where artificially induced rain has become a luxury commodity?' I'd read that. One of the listings really brought me up short, however. The faux book attributed to Andy Weir, who has written tech-heavy speculative novels like The Martian and Project Hail Mary, is titled The Last Algorithm. It's about – get this! – a researcher who realizes an artificial intelligence model has gained consciousness and has been secretly influencing human affairs for years. Is this an AI joke? A sinister confession? An out-and-out threat? Whatever's going on with our soon-to-be tech overlords, there has been some scrappy human resistance. Rebecca Makkai, the real-life author of The Great Believers and I Have Some Questions for You, is included on the AI-generated list as the author of the completely bogus Boiling Point. The reference to this imaginary novel has prompted Makkai to release her own list of 15 titles, which she guarantees are all 'real books … written by humans.' My own last word? This weekend, I'm even more thankful than usual for the Winnipeg Free Press's standalone book section, where the titles are genuine, the authors are authentic, and the reviews are written by actual people connected to Manitoba. Alison GillmorWriter Studying at the University of Winnipeg and later Toronto's York University, Alison Gillmor planned to become an art historian. She ended up catching the journalism bug when she started as visual arts reviewer at the Winnipeg Free Press in 1992. Read full biography Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
Toronto Star
23-05-2025
- Toronto Star
Book reviews for books that don't exist? More proof why journalists must be careful when using AI
Chicago-based freelance journalist Marco Buscaglia had a week from hell that began with some nasty emails he received on his cellphone early Monday. In a nutshell, the blowback he received from readers that morning at 6 a.m. pertained to an article he wrote earlier this year that was published last Sunday, about the top books to read this summer. That article contained major errors — several of the books, 10 of 15 that he listed, don't exist at all. Readers immediately spotted the problems. It's the kind of calamity that gives many of us in the media shivers. As it turns out, Buscaglia relied on content generated by artificial intelligence (AI) to write his article. The AI he used, including a tool named Claude, contained bad information. Buscaglia's erroneous article was featured in a special 'advertorial' section called the Heat Index guide to the best of summer, syndicated by a third party and picked up by two widely read U.S. newspapers, the Chicago Sun-Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer. It was disastrous for Buscaglia, 56, a veteran in journalism for 33 years. He told me in a telephone interview this week from his base in Chicago that he takes full responsibility for what went wrong here, admitting that he didn't do his due diligence by fact-checking the information he gleaned from AI. 'The fact that I completely dropped the ball on this, (not) checking up on it, makes me feel awful and incredibly embarrassed,' he said. He later added: 'I didn't do the leg work to follow up and make sure all this stuff was legit.' While he sat in bed reading those awful emails Monday and pieced together what had happened, he felt like a 'cartoon character' blasted through the stomach by a cannon ball, walking around with a gigantic hole in his stomach for the rest of the day. 'I was devastated,' he said. 'It's been a couple of really bad days here, but I can't say I don't deserve it.' ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW Paramount in his thoughts was the notion that what he did fell well below the standards of the Inquirer and Sun-Times. While AI can be a powerful tool that can assist journalists in some scenarios, as public editor I would state that this unfortunate case demonstrates that AI can also be quite fraught. AI can contain flaws and must be handled with caution by journalists. When things go wrong, like the books fiasco, it can undermine the media's credibility in a climate where public trust is already shaky. 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These LLMs are trained by massive amounts of digital data 'scraped' from the internet. Flaws with AI come when incidents, sometimes called 'hallucinations' occur. That's where AI simply invents facts. This has even caused significant problems in court here in Canada where, in one example, a lawyer relied on legal cases 'invented' by AI tool ChatGPT. Full disclosure: the Star uses AI for processes such as tracking traffic to our website, But we have a strict AI policy — internal and in our publicly accessible Torstar Journalistic Standards Guide. Among the rules stated: human verification of any AI-generated information or content is always required in our newsrooms. In addition, all original journalism must originate and be authored by a human. AI 'must not be used as a primary source for facts or information.' Since stepping into her role last summer, Nicole MacIntyre, the Star's editor-in-chief has spoken publicly about her concerns around AI and its impact on journalism. 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Winnipeg Free Press
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- Winnipeg Free Press
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