Ars Technica Fires Reporter Over AI-Generated Quotes
Ars Technica, the Condé Nast-owned technology outlet, fired senior AI reporter Benj Edwards after the publication retracted one of his stories over the use of fabricated quotes.
The story in question was, ironically, about an AI agent that generated a hit piece on engineer Scott Shambaugh after he rejected its code.
Edwards and a Condé Nast spokesperson did not respond to immediate requests for comment. Futurism first reported the firing, while 404 Media first reported the retraction.
Edwards’ account of the Shambaugh incident was published on Feb. 13; it was taken down two days later and replaced with an editor’s note by editor-in-chief Ken Fisher that apologized for the story.
The story, Fisher wrote in the Feb. 15 note, had used “fabricated quotations generated by an AI tool and attributed to a source who did not say them,” against the outlet’s policy that AI-generated material must be clearly labeled.
“That this happened at Ars is especially distressing,” Fisher wrote. “We have covered the risks of overreliance on AI tools for years, and our written policy reflects those concerns. In this case, fabricated quotations were published in a manner inconsistent with that policy. We have reviewed recent work and have not identified additional issues. At this time, this appears to be an isolated incident.”
Edwards apologized for the incident in a Bluesky post, acknowledging he “unintentionally made a serious journalistic error.” He recalled being sidelined with COVID and finishing the story while in bed with a fever. He wrote that he decided to use an “experimental Claude Code-based AI tool” to help him pull “relevant verbatim source material” from a blog post Shambaugh wrote documenting the AI-generated hit piece.
When the tool didn’t work due to a violation of its content policy, as Shambaugh’s post referenced harassment, Edwards said he “pasted the text into ChatGPT to understand why.”
“I should have taken a sick day because in the course of that interaction, I inadvertently ended up with a paraphrased version of Shambaugh’s words rather than his actual words,” Edwards wrote, acknowledging that he failed to check the quotes with the original blog post.
The story’s text was written by him and senior gaming reporter Kyle Orland, who played “no role in this error,” Edwards wrote. After realizing the mistake, Edwards asked the outlet to pull the report.
“The irony of an I reporter being tripped up by AI hallucination is not lost on me,“ Edwards wrote. “I take accuracy in my work and this is a painful failure on my part.”
Ars Technica readers tore into the mistake in the story’s comment thread, which was closed on Feb. 27 by creative director Aurich Lawson.
“Ars Technica has completed its review of this matter. The appropriate internal steps have been taken,” Lawson wrote. “In the coming weeks, we’ll publish a reader-facing guide explaining how we use — and do not use — AI in our work. We do not comment on personnel decisions.”
Edwards’ author page now lists his role at the outlet in the past tense, noting he “was” a reporter at the outlet covering AI and tech history.
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