Two major newspapers just got totally exposed for recommending a bunch of fake books for summer reading.
Yep, like, completely made-up titles written by AI.
This all started when The Chicago Sun-Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer ran a “Summer Reading List for 2025” in their print editions (last week). At first glance, it looked solid—big-name authors, thoughtful blurbs, the kind of list you’d rip out and take to the bookstore.
Except... Reddit sleuths quickly noticed something weird. Only five out of the fifteen books actually exist. The rest? Hallucinated by a chatbot.
One of the most awkward moments? The list claimed Brit Bennett—author of The Vanishing Half—had a new book out called Hurricane Season that “explores family bonds tested by natural disasters.”
Sounds deep. Very Oprah’s Book Club. But also, very fake. The truth is, she never wrote that. The book doesn’t exist. Like, at all.
So how did this AI fever dream make it into two respected newspapers?
Well, meet Marco Buscaglia, the guy behind the list. He created it for a syndicated insert that both papers published. Turns out, he used AI to generate the content, admitted he didn’t double-check anything, and then just… sent it off.
The Sun-Times immediately tried to backpedal, saying the insert wasn’t their editorial content and hadn’t been approved by their newsroom. They posted on Bluesky, making it clear they take the mistake seriously and are “looking into it.”
Meanwhile, the Inquirer was doing its own clean-up, pulling the content from its digital edition and admitting the AI-generated fluff violated their internal policies. According to their CEO, the newsroom had nothing to do with any of it.
But here's the thing: there was no clear sign that the content wasn’t written by actual journalists.
To the average reader flipping through the paper, it looked official. Like something the paper’s culture editor would have approved over a cappuccino. But nope—it was all a bot doing its best “pretend to be a book critic” impression.
And honestly, this kind of mess couldn’t come at a worse time.
The Sun-Times (which was bought by Chicago Public Media in 2022) has already had a rough year—laying off 20% of its staff back in March. And WBEZ, the NPR station under the same umbrella, has cut multiple podcasts and gone through several rounds of layoffs.
The Inquirer? Same boat. They also did layoffs this year, and trust in local journalism is hanging by a thread as it is.
The bigger picture here?
AI hallucinations are still a very real problem.
Even the latest models sometimes spit out total fiction, but with the confident swagger of a tenured journalist. And when no human editor steps in to check the facts, this is what happens: Fake books. Fake blurbs. Real outrage.
So yeah. An AI wrote a summer reading list. The newspapers printed it. Most of the books were totally made up. Everyone’s embarrassed. Readers are confused. And somewhere, Brit Bennett is probably wondering why strangers keep congratulating her on a novel she’s never heard of.
If you ask me, we’ve officially reached the point where AI needs a babysitter. Because left alone, it’ll just start writing fanfic and calling it journalism.
