In an embarrassing episode that will help aggravate society's uneasy relationship with artificial intelligence, the Chicago Sun-Times, Philadelphia Inquirer and other newspapers around the country published a summer-reading list where most of the books were entirely made up by ChatGPT.
Researchers in the field refer to AI-contrived facts as "hallucinations." In this case, AI hallucinated two-thirds of the books on the list -- along with detailed descriptions -- but attributed them to real authors.
As the scandal quickly made waves across traditional and social media, the Sun-Times -- which not-so-accurately bills itself as "The Hardest-Working Paper in America" -- raced to apologize while also trying to distance itself from the work. “This is licensed content that was not created by, or approved by, the Sun-Times newsroom, but it is unacceptable for any content we provide to our readers to be inaccurate,” a spokesperson said.
In a separate post to its website, the paper said, "This should be a learning moment for all of journalism.”
