How two major newspapers published a summer reading list with books that don’t exist
A popular feature that you’re likely to see in a major metropolitan newspaper this time of year is a summer reading list.
As folks get ready to head to the beaches or mountains for some downtime, they need some cool books to help with their rest and relaxation. So that’s when your local metro can help by tipping you off to the latest good reads from famous authors.
And if you are a reader of the Chicago Sun-Times or The Philadelphia Inquirer, you recently saw such a syndicated list of new books by famous authors, including Percival Everett, who won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and Andy Weir, who wrote “The Martian.”
One problem: The authors are real, but the books they supposedly wrote are not. Turns out, the list was generated by artificial intelligence. Of the 15 books, only five are real. The rest? Made up by AI.
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