The Chicago Sun-Times apologized Tuesday for an embarrassing fiasco involving AI.
In its Sunday edition, the paper published a summer reading list with the titles, authors, and descriptions of 15 books. But it turned out that 10 of those 15 books do not exist.
Author Isabel Allende was born in Chile and raised in Peru. She gained worldwide acclaim in 1982 with the publication of a novel “the House of the Spirits,” which began as a letter to her dying grandfather. She is also the author of “Daughter of Fortune,” “Island Beneath the Sea,” and “The Wind Knows My Name,” among other titles.
But Allende has never written a book called “Tidewater Dreams.” Yet, there that imaginary book is, first on the Sun-Times list — claiming to be “a multigenerational saga set in a coastal town where magical realism meets environmental activism.”
Author Rebecca Makkai gained acclaim in 2018 for “The Great Believers,” the powerful and heartbreaking story of the AIDS epidemic and its devastating effect on a group of young men living in and around Chicago’s Boystown or Northalsted community in the 1980s. Following its publication, Chicago Magazine writer Adam Mogan wrote, “I’ll never be able to look at my adopted neighborhood with the same naïveté.”
Makkai’s follow-up to “The Great Believers” was “I Have Some Questions for You,” an acclaimed literary mystery novel released in 2023. She has never written a book called “Boiling Point” that “centers on a climate scientist forced to reckon with her own family’s environmental impact when her teenage daughter becomes an eco-activist targeting her mother’s wealthy clients.”
But the summer reading list that ran in the Sun-Times claims she did, and calls it her follow-up to “The Great Believers” — something with which “I Have Some Questions for You” Bodie Kane might take issue.
“The Last Algorithm” by Andy Weir, “Hurricane Season” by Brit Bennett, “The Collectors Piece” by Taylor Jenkins Reid, “Nightshade Market” by Min Jin Lee, “The Longest Day” by Rumaan Alam, “Migrations” by Maggie O’Farrell, “The Rainmakers” by Percival Everett, and “Salt and Honey” by Delia Owens are all AI-generated fake titles too.
Lee even wrote on X: “I have not written and will not be writing a novel called ‘Nightshade Market.’ Thank you.”
The last five books — “Bonjour Tristesse” by Françoise Sagan, “Beautiful Ruins” by Jess Walter, “Dandelion Wine” by Ray Bradbury, “Call Me By Your Name” by André Aciman, and “Atonement” by Ian McEwan — are all real titles. However, none of those books are new as one might expect for a summer reading list—the descriptions even acknowledge that “Bonjour Tristesse” was published in 1954 and “Dandelion Wine” in 1957.
The Sun-Times special section was licensed from a national content partner that used a freelance writer. The section was not approved by the paper’s newsroom.
“Our partner confirmed that a freelancer used an AI agent to write the article,” Sun-Times parent organization Chicago Public Media wrote Tuesday. “This should be a learning moment for all of journalism that our work is valued because of the relationship our very real, human reporters and editors have with our audiences.”
The Sun-Times said it is updating its policies to ensure nothing like this happens again. The paper also noted that subscribers will not be charged for the premium edition in which the list appeartd.
The newsroom’s union, the Chicago Sun-Times Guild, released a statement reading in part: “We take great pride in the union-produced journalism that goes into the respected pages of our newspaper and on our website. We’re deeply disturbed that AI-generated content was printed alongside our work.”
