Chicago Sun-Times confirms AI was used to create reading list of books that don’t exist

Outlet calls story, created by freelancer working with one of the newpaper's content partner, a learning moment'

Illinois' prominent Chicago Sun-Times newspaper has confirmed that a summer reading list, which included several recommendations for books that don't exist, was created using artificial intelligence by a freelancer who worked with one of their content partners.

Social media posts began to circulate on Tuesday criticizing the paper for allegedly using the AI software ChatGPT to generate an article with book recommendations for the upcoming summer season called Summer reading list for 2025". As such chatbots are known to make up information, a phenomenon often referred to as AI hallucination", the article contains several fake titles attached to real authors.