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What's going on here? The matplotlib maintainer this story is about correctly notes that all the quotes from his post in the article are made up.
**UPDATE: Link was pulled; see below.**
https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/02/after-a-routine-code-rejection-an-ai-agent-published-a-hit-piece-on-someone-by-name
I will be very disappointed if this was BenJ or Dan using AI to write their article since both have had really good pieces in the past, but it doesn’t sound like this is some Ars wide shift at this point. Like all things, it makes sense that it will take time for them to investigate this, Aurich (the Ars community lead and graphic designer) was clear that with this happening on a Friday afternoon and a US holiday on Monday, it’s likely to be into next week before they have anything they can share.
They know how and why it happened, they are taking the weekend to investigate how to best take their foot from their mouths without eating too much shit
In typical Ars fashion, the editorial team appears to be looking into what happened and are being fairly open about at things: https://arstechnica.com/civis/threads/journalistic-standards.1511650/
I will be very disappointed if this was BenJ or Dan using AI to write their article since both have had really good pieces in the past, but it doesn’t sound like this is some Ars wide shift at this point. Like all things, it makes sense that it will take time for them to investigate this, Aurich (the Ars community lead and graphic designer) was clear that with this happening on a Friday afternoon and a US holiday on Monday, it’s likely to be into next week before they have anything they can share.
Benj was an author: https://web.archive.org/web/20260213194851/https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/02/after-a-routine-code-rejection-an-ai-agent-published-a-hit-piece-on-someone-by-name/
Though in the Ars response they say “Scott’s post”, so I’m confused.
I’m betting it’s definitely Ben since he is pretty pro-AI
Honestly, this whole thing surprises me. I have a lot of respect for Ars Technica. I hope they clean this up and prevent further issues in the future.
Benj and Kyle were the authors of the article; Dan’s name wasn’t on it.
They know how and why it happened, they are taking the weekend to investigate how to best take their foot from their mouths without eating too much shit
BenJ had coauthor credit on it.