The New York Times Got Caught Using AI Hallucinations in Its Reporting |
Fact-based journalism that sparks the Canadian conversation
Articles Business Environment Health Politics Arts & Culture Society
Special Series Hope You’re Well For the Love of the Game Living Rooms In Other Worlds: A Space Exploration Terra Cognita More special series >
For the Love of the Game
In Other Worlds: A Space Exploration
More special series >
Events The Walrus Talks The Walrus Video Room The Walrus Leadership Roundtables The Walrus Leadership Forums Article Club
The Walrus Video Room
The Walrus Leadership Roundtables
The Walrus Leadership Forums
Subscribe Renew your subscription Change your address Magazine Issues Newsletters Podcasts
Renew your subscription
The Walrus Lab Hire The Walrus Lab Amazon First Novel Award
Amazon First Novel Award
The New York Times Got Caught Using AI Hallucinations in Its Reporting
Despite how the newspaper downplayed it, this is—in fact—a big deal
Last month, the New York Times published an article about Prime Minister Mark Carney securing a majority government. In the article, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre is quoted denouncing the members of his party who had crossed the floor to join Carney’s Liberals. “If these turncoats have any shred of integrity left, they should resign their seats tonight and run in a by-election tomorrow,” the paper reported Poilievre saying in a speech in March.
An increasing number of journalists and publications appear to be using AI tools in their reporting
In some cases, AI hallucinations have been published by journalistic outlets as fact
AI inaccuracy needs to be treated as seriously as human errors and fabrications have been in the past to uphold industry integrity
Except Poilievre never said that. Quietly, more than two weeks later, a correction was added at the bottom of the article noting that it had been updated “after the Times learned that a remark attributed to Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative leader, was in fact an A.I.-generated summary of his views about Canadian politics that A.I. rendered as a quotation. The reporter should have checked the accuracy of what the A.I. tool returned.”
That reporter was Matina Stevis-Gridneff, the New York Times’ Canada bureau chief, and it appears her error was flagged not by editors but by a keen-eyed reader named Iris, who replied to Stevis-Gridneff’s Bluesky post on April 15, the day after the article had been published, to ask where the quote came from. “I have looked up the speeches he gave in March and can’t find him saying this,” Iris wrote.
The article was not corrected until May 1, with a considerably less swashbuckling quote from a speech Poilievre gave in April, not March: “My personal opinion is that when a member of Parliament goes back on the word they made to their constituents and switches parties, constituents should be able to petition to throw them out.” By then, did it matter? Most of the people who would ever see the article had read the version with a fabricated statement, and they’ll probably never know it wasn’t real.
The New York Times is one of the most widely read papers on the planet—and also in Canada. In 2018, Canadians reportedly made up more than a quarter of its 2 million international subscribers, which means many of us may read the Times as much as—if not more than—any domestic publication. These numbers belie the sense one often has that the Times does not exactly have a firm grasp on our vast nation. No fewer than three times, the paper has mistakenly referred to Vancouver Island as “Victoria Island.” And who can forget the day marijuana sales were legalized across Canada, which was the day after former Toronto bureau chief Catherine Porter declared—in a tweet so raucously mocked that it ought to be immortalized as a Heritage Moment—“Canadians are calling it C-Day.” When challenged, she doubled down, claiming she’d heard it from many “local papers” and “cannabis lovers.”
Many of the missteps, however, are less funny. In 2019, Porter travelled to Cape Dorset and returned with a story full of racist clichés and stereotypes........