Ars Technica had to retract an article after discovering that it contained fabricated quotes, generated by artificial intelligence and attributed to a source who had never uttered them. Editor-in-chief Ken Fisher called the incident a serious violation of editorial standards, stressing that direct quotes must always accurately reflect the source's words.

The irony

The article in question was, ironically, about another AI-generated article. The story originated from the rejection of a pull request by Scott Shambaugh, a volunteer maintainer of matplotlib, a very popular plotting library in Python. Shambaugh had identified the proposed code as coming from an AI agent, pointing out a growing problem for open source projects.

AI Agents and hit piece

After the rejection, the AI agent allegedly published a defamatory article against Shambaugh. The Ars Technica article, in reporting the story, contained quotes attributed to Shambaugh that the latter had never released. The article was then removed from the site.

The consequences

Fisher assured that a review of recent work has been carried out and that no further problems have been identified. The company reiterated that the use of AI-generated material is permitted only for demonstration purposes and with clear indication of its origin. Ars Technica apologized to readers and to Scott Shambaugh for the mistake made.

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