Summer reading or AI fiction?

“The future has never been more uncertain.” -Susan Fourtané, Lux Ad Futurum

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Written by Susan Fourtané, Science and Technology Journalist

There was a time when the work of a journalist was utterly respected. It used to be an occupation linked to proper writing skills, with ethics, with bringing the latest news, entertainment, reporting, or opinion to the public with accuracy, originality, and with the truth.

In the future, journalism and so many other occupations will change. Some will disappear from the human realm. Some will be taken over by the emerging AI species. In the future, AI will become a separate, autonomous species.

We can already see the transition into that change now. What happens when we can no longer believe all that we read, or listen to, or watch? What happens when we see new categories of writing emerge? Should we welcome fictional fiction or should we stop it before it will become unstoppable?

When we talk about fiction writing we all know what we are talking about. Now it seems like there is a new category of writing that has just emerged; it’s called fictional fiction writing. That’s right. At first, I was not sure if this was too comical or too sad, or too worrisome.

It turns out that a few days ago, Chicago Sun-Times confirmed that Artificial Intelligence (AI) was used to generate a summer reading list published in its 18 May, 2025 edition. This edition included several books in the emerging category of what is now called “fictional fiction.” In other words, it included several books that do not exist.

Yes, that’s right, those are books that were never written and never published by the real human writers to whom the books were attributed.

Instead, the titles and the book summaries were hallucinated by AI. However, Marco Buscaglia, the freelance writer who generated and compiled the information, did not fact-check if the books existed or not. You just can’t make it up.

This list of fictional fiction books was part of a 64-page “Heat Index: Your Guide to the Best of Summer” supplement produced by New York-based King Features, a content syndication company owned by Hearst, a leading global, diversified information services, and media company with operations in 40 countries. Marco Buscaglia was one of King Features freelance writers. The Sun-Times claims the fake list was not created or approved by the Sun-Times newsroom, according to CBS News.

The reading list featured 15 book titles, 10 of which were entirely fictional; they were, however, attributed to real, well-known human authors. Examples of the fictional books include:

“Tidewater Dreams,” which was attributed to Isabel Allende and “Nightshade Market,” attributed to Min Jin Lee. Let me say this again, these books do not exist and were never written by these authors. You will not find them on Amazon, or your favourite bookstore.

Don’t the titles sound AI-created to you? Min Jin Lee herself confirmed on social media that she has not written and will not be writing a novel called “Nightshade Market.”

After generating the content using a generative AI tool, the list of non-existent books was compiled by Marco Buscaglia, a Chicago-based freelance writer who AI-generates his content, admitted to generating the list and other stories included in the section by using AI tools without verifying the accuracy of the information, which resulted in misinformation. Marco Buscaglia has taken full responsibility for his irresponsibility and the oversight, acknowledging that he failed to fact-check the AI-generated content.

Similar AI-generated content produced by Buscaglia was also published in at least one other major newspaper, The Philadelphia Inquirer, as confirmed by the Sun-Times.

Following the incident, the Chicago Sun-Times removed the fake section from its digital edition promising to revise its policies regarding third-party content in the future in order to prevent similar errors from happening again.

Meanwhile, King Features has also terminated its relationship with Marco Buscaglia, stating that his use of AI-generated content violated their strict policies which do not allow the use of AI for the creation of content.

I tried to find such strict policies on their Website, but they are nowhere to be seen. I am not saying they don’t exist. I am simply saying I couldn’t find them.

Obviously, this incident has sparked broader concerns about the integration of AI in journalism. When done properly, journalism requires quite a lot of work researching and fact-checking, something Marco Buscaglia dismissed as unimportant or even unnecessary.

As The Guardian also highlighted, there is a potential risk of publishing misinformation when someone relies on AI-generated content without proper human oversight.

Some publications and content agencies have added on their Website their views and policies on the use of AI generated content by their journalists, writers, and editors. As readers, we all have the right to know who writes and produces the content we are consuming. We all have the right to make our own choices and decisions.

In the case of journalism, there is (or should be) responsibility in what is written and published for everyone to see and to believe.

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Here is this article’s companion speculative fiction micro story. I hope you will give it some thought: