The New York Times Published an A.I.-Fabricated Quote Attributed to Pierre Poilievre ⇥ bsky.app

On 14 April, Matina Stevis-Gridneff, the New York Times’ Canada bureau chief, quoted Pierre Poilievre, leader of the Conservative Party, calling the spate of floor crossers “turncoats”. He apparently said this — and more — in a speech in March. This was printed on page A7 and sat for weeks on the web until 1 May when the Times corrected the paragraph by using actual quotes from Poilievre’s speech in April, not March.

Those earlier quotes? According to the editor’s note appended to the bottom, it was “an A.I.-generated summary of his views about Canadian politics that A.I. rendered as a quotation”.

The Walrus’ Michelle Cyca, on Bluesky [sic]:

personally I think it’s a very big deal that the Canada bureau chief for the @nytimes.com — certainly one of the highest-paid journalists in the country — asked an unspecified “AI tool” what Poilievre said & published its AI-hallucinated quotes in her reporting.

Cyca is not kidding about the pay. The Times is currently hiring a Western Canada correspondent with a base pay of between $158,000 and $235,000 Canadian; the bureau chief is surely a pay grade above that. For comparison, the Globe and Mail is hiring an Ottawa bureau chief with a maximum posted salary of $146,000.

How much more would the Times need to pay a reporter to verify the quotations they use in an article? Could the Times afford an editor to double-check these things? I was at an event this evening about A.I. and art, and one of the panelists — a university professor — said that he assumes that A.I. is now omnipresent and acts accordingly. Why is one of the most prestigious English-language newspapers not doing the same for its reporters, regardless of its policies?