Philadelphia Inquirer prints summer reading list full of AI-generated fake titles
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The Philadelphia Inquirer last week published a "summer reading list for 2025" that included multiple nonexistent titles by real authors, and was partially produced by AI.
The big picture: The list, which ran in a print supplement, also appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times, causing a stir on social media as journalists worry about AI-generated material replacing human-made content.
- The Inquirer confirmed to Axios that the supplement contained material generated by AI, which the newspaper's publisher and CEO, Lisa Hughes, says is "a violation of our own internal policies and a serious breach."
- Hughes says the newsroom was not involved in producing the supplement.
Between the lines: Today's AI models continue to make up things in ways that AI makers still haven't figured out how to detect or stop, and human users keep failing to check their output.
Case in point: The first item on the list is a novel by the "beloved Chilean American author" Isabel Allende titled "Tidewater Dreams."
- Allende is real, but "Tidewater Dreams" — ostensibly a "climate fiction novel" that "explores how one family confronts rising seas levels while uncovering long-buried secrets" — doesn't exist.
- You have to read down the list of 15 titles to the 11th entry before you hit a real book (Françoise Sagan's 1954 novel, "Bonjour Tristesse").
Zoom in: The article was part of Heat Index, a 56-page summer guide supplement published May 15. It appeared before an ad for the Inquirer that exhorts readers to "Unsubscribe from 'traffic, parking, boardwalk cuisine… yay!' Subscribe to keeping everything beachy."
- It was also posted on the paper's online edition and has since been removed.
- King Features designed and produced the material in the supplement, and the Inquirer has been receiving syndicated materials from King for decades, Hughes tells Axios.
How it happened: Chicago-based freelance writer Marco Buscaglia has since admitted to 404 Media to using AI to write the piece without fact-checking it.
- "I do use AI for background at times but always check out the material first," he told the outlet. "This time, I did not and I can't believe I missed it because it's so obvious. No excuses. On me 100%."