The author of a nonfiction book examining artificial intelligence’s impact on truth has acknowledged that his work contains numerous fabricated or misattributed quotes created by AI.
The New York Times reports that Steven Rosenbaum, author of The Future of Truth admitted this week that his book includes multiple fake or misattributed quotes generated by AI. The admission came after the Times identified the fake quotes and contacted Rosenbaum for comment over the weekend.
In a statement released Monday night, Rosenbaum acknowledged that the book contained “a handful of improperly attributed or synthetic quotes” and said he had launched his own investigation into the matter. He characterized the inclusion of incorrect quotes as accidental and stated he had “no intention of fabricating any viewpoints” during the writing process.
“As I disclosed in the book’s acknowledgments, I used A.I. tools ChatGPT and Claude during the research, writing and editing process,” Rosenbaum said in the statement. “That does not excuse these errors, of which I take full responsibility. I am now working with the editors to thoroughly review and quickly correct any affected passages; any future editions will be corrected.”
The book was published by an imprint of BenBella Books and distributed by Simon and Schuster. BenBella Books, which operates independently of Simon and Schuster, did not respond to requests for comment, while Simon and Schuster declined to comment.
Rosenbaum is the executive director of the Sustainable Media Center, a nonprofit organization dedicated to giving “a new generation of media consumers” and creators “ownership of their increasingly media-centric lives,” according to its mission statement. The center has brought together media and technology leaders for in-person gatherings and online interviews, and Rosenbaum is considered a well-known convener in the media industry.
The Future of Truth has received significant attention since its release, including an excerpt published in Wired magazine. The book features promotional endorsements from journalists including extreme leftist Taylor Lorenz, Michael Wolff, and Nicholas Thompson, chief executive of the Atlantic. Maria Ressa, a Nobel Peace Prize-winning journalist known for her scrutiny of former Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte, wrote the foreword.
The Times review identified several fake quotes scattered throughout the book. One quote attributed to prominent technology journalist Kara Swisher states: “The most sophisticated A.I. language model is like a mirror. It reflects our own morality back at us, polished and articulate, but ultimately empty behind the surface. It’s not bound by Asimov’s laws or any ethical framework — it’s bound by the patterns in its training data and the objectives set by its creators.”
When asked about the quote, Swisher said in a text message that she “never said that,” adding that the quote appeared to be fabricated by AI rather than by Rosenbaum himself. “I also sound like I have a stick up my butt, according to ChatGPT,” Swisher said.
Another chapter discussing social media and fabricated videos’ effects on teenagers attributes two quotes to How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett, a psychology professor at Northeastern University. One purported quote reads: “Emotions aren’t just reactions to truth — they’re how we construct truth. When young people say something ‘feels true,’ they’re describing a sophisticated process of meaning-making that integrates emotional and social signals.”
Barrett told the Times in an email that the quotes “don’t appear in the book and they are also wrong.” She explained: “I would never say ’emotions aren’t just reactions to the truth’ — they are not reactions and ‘truth’ in science is a complicated concept that I tend to avoid. Also, I would never say that ’emotional and social signals’ are integrated — there are no emotional or social signals, per se. There are signals, and the brain creates their meaning as emotional or social.”
Some portions of the book contain authentic quotes that are improperly attributed. One chapter cites Artificial Unintelligence, a book by Meredith Broussard, a New York University professor. While the quote is genuine, it did not appear in the book but was instead spoken by Broussard during a 2023 interview with “Marketplace Tech,” a daily radio show. “It looks like this is either an A.I. hallucination or a misattributed quote,” Broussard said.
In a statement, Rosenbaum suggested the fake quotes could serve as a cautionary tale. “If the episode serves as a warning about the risks of A.I.-assisted research and verification, that is why I wrote the book,” he said. “These A.I. errors do not, in fact, diminish the larger questions that the book raises about truth, trust and A.I. and its impact on society, democracy and editorial.”
A book about truth in the AI age contains false quotes, highlighting the dangers of AI when human users aren’t careful about the application of this emerging powerful technology. Breitbart News social media director Wynton Hall has written his instant bestseller Code Red: The Left, the Right, China, and the Race to Control AI to serve as the definitive guide on how the MAGA movement can create positions on AI that benefit humanity without handing control of our nation to the leftists of Silicon Valley or allowing the Chinese to take over the world.
Read more at the New York Times here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of AI, free speech, and online censorship.