ArsTechnica seemingly using AI to write an article about AI impersonation

by AdmiralAsshaton 2/13/2026, 9:00 PMwith 8 comments

by Cyphaseon 2/13/2026, 11:48 PM

To be clear, the story here is that Ars Technica published an article featuring quotes from Scott Shambaugh (recently in the news for having an AI bot write a hit piece against him), and Scott commented on the article saying the quotes in the second half of the article were inaccurate (based on my reading, starting from the heading "A new kind of bot problem").

Wayback Machine archive of the article on Ars: https://web.archive.org/web/20260213194851/https://arstechni...

Earliest archive of Scott's blog post that is claimed in the article to be the source of the quotes: https://web.archive.org/web/20260212165418/https://theshambl...

Early Mastodon post about this situation, with a screenshot of Scott's comment: https://infosec.exchange/@mttaggart/116065340523529645

A couple of posts on the Ars forum; the first ends with a reply from a staff member:

https://arstechnica.com/civis/threads/journalistic-standards...

https://arstechnica.com/civis/threads/um-what-happened-to-th...

by DannyPageon 2/13/2026, 10:39 PM

https://arstechnica.com/civis/threads/journalistic-standards...

> We have pulled the story over concerns that it may have gone against our content policies. I locked the comments, and I'm going to lock this one too, we need some time. We are doing an investigation right now to figure out exactly what happened.

by Jtsummerson 2/13/2026, 9:22 PM

What's the highly editorialized title based on?

In case it changes, the submitted title is currently:

  ArsTechnica seemingly using AI to write an article about AI impersonation
The actual title is:

  After a routine code rejection, an AI agent published a hit piece on someone by name
And the article is not about AI impersonation of anyone which makes AdmiralAsshat's title all the stranger.