Ars Technica Fires Reporter Benj Edwards After He Published Story With AI-Fabricated Quotes

Maggie Harrison Dupré, writing for Futurism:

Earlier this month, Ars retracted the story after it was found to include fake quotes attributed to a real person. The article — a write-up of a viral incident in which an AI agent seemingly published a hit piece about a human engineer named Scott Shambaugh — was initially published on February 13. After Shambaugh pointed out that he’d never said the quotes attributed to him, Ars’ editor-in-chief Ken Fisher apologized in an editor’s note, in which he confirmed that the piece included “fabricated quotations generated by an AI tool and attributed to a source who did not say them” and characterized the error as a “serious failure of our standards.” He added that, upon further review, the error appeared to be an “isolated incident.”

Shortly after Fisher’s editor’s note was published, Edwards, one of the report’s two bylined authors, took to Bluesky to take “full responsibility” for the inclusion of the fabricated quotes.

Edwards:

I sincerely apologize to Scott Shambaugh for misrepresenting his words. I take full responsibility. The irony of an Al reporter being tripped up by Al hallucination is not lost on me. I take accuracy in my work very seriously and this is a painful failure on my part.

When I realized what had happened, I asked my boss to pull the piece because I was too sick to fix it on Friday. There was nothing nefarious at work, just a terrible judgement call which was no one’s fault but my own.

Ars fired him at the end of February.

★ Saturday, 14 March 2026