The Author Who Wrote About AI Lying Used AI to Lie

Journalist Steven Rosenbaum published a book called The Future of Truth: How AI Reshapes Reality. The entire premise is that AI is bending, blurring, and synthesizing the truth. According to Ars Technica, a New York Times investigation found the book contains what Rosenbaum himself now calls "a handful of improperly attributed or synthetic quotes."

In other words: fabricated quotes. In a book about fabrication.

Tech reporter Kara Swisher told the Times she "never said" one of the quotes attributed to her. Northeastern University professor Lisa Feldman Barrett said the quotes attributed to her "don't appear in my book, and they are also wrong."

Rosenbaum used OpenAI's ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude heavily during research — to "surface ideas, locate articles, summarize themes, identify people or papers." He told Ars he draws a hard line between AI-assisted research and actual reporting. But that line clearly failed. His editors are now conducting a full "citation audit" for future editions.

Rosenbaum says he "learned a lesson" and will be "much more suspicious." Yet in the same breath, he told Ars he has zero interest in abandoning AI-assisted research. "The idea of taking X years off while it sorts itself out... it's just not in my nature."

So the lesson from publishing fake quotes: keep using the tool that produced them, just with more caution.

A Prestigious Literary Prize May Have Gone to a Machine

The Commonwealth Short Story Prize — administered by Commonwealth Writers, with winning stories published in outlets including Granta, since 2012 — appears to have given its regional award to a story that wasn't written by a human.

Jamir Nazir's entry, "The Serpent in the Grove," raised red flags immediately. Nabeel S. Qureshi, a former visiting scholar of AI at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, was among the first to publicly flag it, pointing specifically to the opening sentences as bearing the unmistakable rhythm of LLM-generated prose.

The Verge reported on the controversy, with writer Gaby Del Valle acknowledging the difficulty of detection. LLMs are trained on human writing — they mirror what they've consumed. That makes definitive proof hard. Difficult to prove is different from not happening.

What's being overlooked: the Commonwealth Prize organizers have no meaningful AI submission policy. These institutions are reacting to scandals instead of preventing them.

Spotify Just Commodified Your Favorite Artist's Voice

Spotify and Universal Music Group announced a licensing deal that will let users generate AI remixes and covers of UMG's catalog — Beyoncé, The Weeknd, AC/DC, take your pick. According to The Verge, UMG CEO Sir Lucian Grainge is framing this as a way to "deepen fan relationships."

The Verge's Terrence O'Brien put it plainly — the internet is already drowning in flat reggae versions of Nirvana and AI country covers of pop songs. This tool makes that easier to produce and share. Real fans learn instruments. Real fans study craft. What Spotify is selling is the illusion of creativity without the work.

On the Suno subreddit, users "proudly proclaim that they don't listen to artists on Spotify or other streaming services anymore, they only listen to what they generate." These aren't superfans deepening a connection to an artist. They've replaced the artist entirely.

And UMG signed off on this. The label that spends millions fighting AI piracy just licensed its entire catalog to the same technology.

What Coverage Is Missing

The hard questions aren't being asked. If Rosenbaum wrote a book about AI distorting truth, and AI distorted truth in his book, does he owe his readers more than a citation audit? An apology for the irony?

Right-leaning media has been largely absent from this story. Publishing houses, literary awards, and streaming platforms are all moving faster than their own standards. That's a story about institutional gatekeepers failing at their core job.

The issue is straightforward: AI is a tool. Tools don't have integrity. The people holding the tool do. Rosenbaum failed his readers. The Commonwealth Prize organizers failed their prize. UMG and Spotify are failing their artists.

What This Means for You

If you bought The Future of Truth, some of the quotes you read may be invented. You paid real money for synthetic facts.

If you read a prize-winning short story this month, it might have been written by a server farm, not a human being.

If you're a musician, the label supposedly protecting your catalog just licensed your voice to a prompt box.

These are choices made by people who knew better.