Editor’s Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations
- Thread starter JournalBot
- Start date
What was the original article? If I read the original article, I’d like to know so I can mentally correct what I learned from it. Especially since I don’t want to repeat bad information if I talk to someone else about the topic.
Edit: Thank you everyone who replied and gave info on where to find the original article. Here’s the retracted article’s link. https://meincmagazine.com/ai/2026/02/...gent-published-a-hit-piece-on-someone-by-name
The original text has been replaced by the one paragraph retraction notice, but this should help anyone else wondering if they read the article with bad info. If you want to dive further, the old version’s available on archive.org.
Edit: Thank you everyone who replied and gave info on where to find the original article. Here’s the retracted article’s link. https://meincmagazine.com/ai/2026/02/...gent-published-a-hit-piece-on-someone-by-name
The original text has been replaced by the one paragraph retraction notice, but this should help anyone else wondering if they read the article with bad info. If you want to dive further, the old version’s available on archive.org.
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Greatly appreciate this direct statement clarifying your standards, and yet another reason that I hope Ars can remain a strong example of quality journalism in a world where that is becoming hard to find
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From googling the name at the end, it was the one about an AI agent defaming an OSS maintainer after a push request got rejected
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I'd note that the actual situation is worse than what this retraction notes, given the content of the original story (which I read when it was first posted). I strongly encourage everyone to review Scott's take on the situation at https://theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-published-a-hit-piece-on-me/ and the link at the top of that article to the aftermath.
This is worth deep reflection by both developers and news media alike, and I encourage Ars to revisit this topic with a human-written summary of where we suddenly find ourselves with agentic systems.
This is worth deep reflection by both developers and news media alike, and I encourage Ars to revisit this topic with a human-written summary of where we suddenly find ourselves with agentic systems.
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I think this is the one about an AI bot getting hot and bothered about a rejected push request. Kudos to ARS for catching this and very publicly stating it. <ninjaed>
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Ironically enough, it was an article about AI agents going off the rails and writing hit-peices against github maintainers for "unfairly" rejecting the agent's patch.
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Exactly. When newspapers publish corrections they tell you what is being corrected, not just that something was disappeared. The same for research journals.
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Second this. I get quite a bit of information from Ars articles and would appreciate knowing which one to mentally write off.
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Thank you for upholding your journalistic standards.
And a note to our current administration in DC - this is what transparency looks like.
And a note to our current administration in DC - this is what transparency looks like.
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Ars didnt catch it, the person who was “quoted” posted in the comments that they never said those things… what Ars did do is immediately remove the story (which was the right thing to do).
I’m skeptical that this is the first time that AI has been used in such a manner by the person responsible, and not just the first time they were caught.
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Ya, the irony of the type of article that the AI fabricated quotes were attached to being about OTHER unhinged AI drama is palpable. It took the actual person who was being misquoted to reply in the comments for it to really get traction.
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i'm glad you did a prominent correction and did it quickly. i'm unclear on how it happened, tho. it was staff writer using AI? a one time contributor? a wired article? i'm curious as to both how it happened and how you will prevent it in the future.
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Thank you for your clarity and integrity on your correction. I am a long time reader and ardent supporter of Ars for exactly these reasons. Trust is so rare but also the bedrock of civilization. Thank you for taking it seriously in the age of mass produced lies.
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I like the decisive editorial action. No BS, just high human standards of integrity. That's another reason to stick with ARS over news feeds.
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How refreshing to own a mistake and correct it - if only this was the societal standard instead of a rare instance in a particularly honest enclave.
Thanks Ars, renewal time is soon, i guess that decision will continue to be settled.
Thanks Ars, renewal time is soon, i guess that decision will continue to be settled.
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anonymouschicken
Ars Scholae Palatinae
Yes it was actually pointed out by the person who the quotes were attributed to. He showed up in the comments of the article, it quickly caused a furor. Removing the article was the right call.
Two different writers were listed on the byline. Did one use AI without the other's knowledge? Seems like a big lapse in judgement happened somewhere.
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I agree, I would like to know that too!
Fortunately, the name mentioned in the article helped me out and a quick search on DuckDuckGo gave me links to a story about an AI agent doing a hitpiece on Scott Shambaugh after the latter closed a PR opened by the former on matplotlib.
Scott's second blogpost on the matter contains a screenshot of the Ars Technica article:
https://theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-published-a-hit-piece-on-me-part-2/
I'll leave it to everyone's own judgement what to make of the fact that reporting on AI uses AI to generate said reporting, and leaves it to an AI to fabricate quotes without at least the author doing the fact-checking on it...
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What happens to the writer who has obviously been shovelling AI slop since well before he got caught?
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Yes, part of the story is about AI's impact on media, but TBH part of me simply cheered that Ars is running retractions at all. We're so far down the road to the "firehose of bullshit" from so many media sites, that anyone actually taking the time to run a proper retraction for a misleading story is commendable. Yes, everyone should be doing this. But seriously, how often do you read misleading stories, and how often do you read retractions for misleading stories? In an ideal world, shouldn't those happen at around the same rate?
I feel like I just looked through a portal out of our timeline into the Walter Cronkite Era of news. Kudos to Ars!
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I, for one, got so damn disappointed I already dropped my sub in anger. Yet I’m here, reading the comments. Hard to break habits after being a reader for 25 years I guess.
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Still… I’ll note that someone writes and runs AI programs, even if they are ‘agentic’. And we don’t appear to know who that is in this case. Can the ‘agent’ here claim innocence because it was only following orders? I think not.
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Thank you for this clear statement about your standards and your commitment to upholding them going forward. I have high expectations for Ars Technica and was disappointed. I am reassured that you will correct the problems in you editorial process so that this will not happen again.
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Hopefully Benj and Kyle have learned that AI sources are simply not to be trusted.
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Sincerely hope to see a post mortem and follow up article on this in the coming week. Incredibly glad y'all were willing to retract it, and issue a statement on the why.
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Here is the archive.org snapshot of the retracted article if anyone else is looking for it: https://web.archive.org/web/2026021...ent-published-a-hit-piece-on-someone-by-name/
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The policy was already pretty clear, and not fabricating quotes seems pretty obvious (AI or not), so this is not exactly helping as a statement. One head should have rolled. Two different writers were listed on the byline; which one is it so I can avoid them in the future? I would assume Benj at this point.
UPDATE: this was indeed Benj (blaming it on COVID?). I personally am not interested in seeing him fired, but I switched to BazQux for my RSS feeds for that very reason; it allows me to filter out articles by keyword. So "Benj Edwards", enjoy the company of "Trump" and "Musk"...
UPDATE: this was indeed Benj (blaming it on COVID?). I personally am not interested in seeing him fired, but I switched to BazQux for my RSS feeds for that very reason; it allows me to filter out articles by keyword. So "Benj Edwards", enjoy the company of "Trump" and "Musk"...
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Yeah, I also find this disappointing and I'd like to see Ars Technica publish a post-morten of how this could have come to be published, without the editors noticing something was off.
And what they will do to prevent this from happening again in the future.
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Sadly a large proportion of the population believes that admitting any sort of mistake is a sign of weakness. That it is to be strong to never admit a mistake was made, even if it was glaringly obvious to everyone. And that any sign of weakness means you are not strong person. It's why you'll never see them give an apology or continue to press a narrative that is false because flip-flopping is also a sign of weak person.
It's like they want to prove they are superhuman, and invulnerable to human folly. Of course, the additional belief is they are above the proles and that we're cockroaches to be stepped upon and squished.
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Given the structure of OpenClaw, this is hard to answer. The "soul.md" prompt file is recursively modified by the agentic system, and evolves outside of human control. Sort of like RLHF, without the HF. I'd argue that the responsibility still lies with the person who deployed the initial instance, but that may have had a very different seed prompt. After that, it's turtles all the way down. Maybe the real lesson is: don't wire all the agents together for lulz and then take a nap.
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This is where I'm at as well. The retraction is warranted and appreciated. However, this shouldn't have happened in the first place and shakes my trust in the reporting Ars does going forward.
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Looking into Scott Shambaugh's blog, it appears that the Ars writers used AI to scrape his blog.
Quote above is from his blog: https://web.archive.org/web/20260214060018/https://theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-published-a-hit-piece-on-me-part-2/
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Which author was it? There were two credited. This is a load of bullshit being served to us.
UPDATE: It was Edwards:
View: https://bsky.app/profile/benjedwards.com/post/3mewgow6ch22p
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Folks. Deleting the story is at best like hitting a double when it's a homer that is needed. I'll cite the policy over at the NYT: the updated story is appended with a quote of the incorrect text, exactly as it was originally published, along with the corrected text. Here, there is no posting of a direct link to the now-deleted story; Ars merely mentions archive.com. Several commenters here show how they found the original story by less-than-direct sleuthing.
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