Chicago Sun-Times Prints AI-Generated Summer Reading List With Books That Don't Exist

Jason Koebler writing for 404 Media:

The article, called “Summer Reading list for 2025,” suggests reading Tidewater by Isabel Allende, a “multigenerational saga set in a coastal town where magical realism meets environmental activism. Allende’s first climate fiction novel explores how one family confronts rising sea levels while uncovering long-buried secrets.” It also suggests reading The Last Algorithm by Andy Weir, “another science-driven thriller” by the author of The Martian. “This time, the story follows a programmer who discovers that an AI system has developed consciousness—and has been secretly influencing global events for years.” Neither of these books exist, and many of the books on the list either do not exist or were written by other authors than the ones they are attributed to.

Oops.

AI has its uses, but at this stage anything it produces really needs to be checked by a human. Maybe, eventually, we’ll get to a point where that isn’t the case, but we’re not there yet.