Description: Ars Technica reportedly retracted an article after purportedly AI-generated text was presented as direct quotations from a source who disputed having said them. The editor-in-chief reportedly acknowledged a standards failure and said the publication was not consistent with Ars policy on AI-generated material, and apologized to readers and to matplotlib maintainer Scott Shambaugh. An author reportedly later said he had inadvertently used an AI-paraphrased version of the source text as quotes.
Editor Notes: For fuller context, please refer to Incident 1373: AI Coding Agent 'MJ Rathbun' Allegedly Published Personalized Accusatory Blog Post Targeting Matplotlib Maintainer After Pull Request Closure.
Entities
View all entitiesAlleged: OpenAI developed an AI system deployed by Ars Technica, which harmed Scott Shambaugh , Open-source maintainers , Epistemic integrity and Ars Technica readers.
Alleged implicated AI system: ChatGPT
Incident Stats
Incident ID
1392
Report Count
2
Incident Date
2026-02-13
Editors
Daniel Atherton
Incident Reports
Reports Timeline
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The Conde Nast-owned tech publication Ars Technica has retracted an article that contained fabricated, AI-generated quotes, according to an editor's note posted to its website.
"On Friday afternoon, Ars Technica published an article contai…
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Ken Fisher post-incident response
On Friday afternoon, Ars Technica published an article containing fabricated quotations generated by an AI tool and attributed to a source who did not say them. That is a serious failure of our standards. Direct quotations must always refle…
Variants
A "variant" is an AI incident similar to a known case—it has the same causes, harms, and AI system. Instead of listing it separately, we group it under the first reported incident. Unlike other incidents, variants do not need to have been reported outside the AIID. Learn more from the research paper.
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