Senior European journalist suspended over AI-generated quotes
Mediahuis suspends Peter Vandermeersch, who says he ‘fell into trap of hallucinations’, after investigation by newspaper where he was once editor-in-chief
Dan Milmo Global technology editor
Fri 20 Mar 2026 16.13 GMT
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The publisher of the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf and the Irish Independent has suspended one of its senior journalists after he admitted using AI to “wrongly put words into people’s mouths”.
Peter Vandermeersch, the former head of the Irish operations at Mediahuis, said he “fell into the trap of hallucinations” – the term for AI-generated errors – when using the technology.
Vandermeersch, a fellow of “journalism and society” at the European publishing group, has been suspended from his role.
The experienced journalist said he had summarised reports using AI tools such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google’s NotebookLM, and not checked whether the quotes from those summaries were accurate. He subsequently published them in his Substack newsletter.
AI tools such as ChatGPT are used by hundreds of millions of people for an array of tasks ranging from the relatively straightforward, such as suggesting recipes, to carrying out complex academic research. However, they are prone to making errors.
Vandermeersch said he made a second mistake by failing to correct false quotes immediately, instead leaving that work to a title he had overseen for nearly a decade. He said he was enthusiastic about the possibilities of AI and had wanted to experiment with them extensively.
“Journalism is human work,” he wrote. “I remain convinced that AI can be a powerful tool – one that can help journalism become better, dig deeper, and be more precise. But not by using AI in the way I did in the early months of this blog.”
Vandermeersch declined to comment.
I am so blown away by this article and how no one involved seems to comprehend that the simple solution here is TO NOT USE SOMETHING THAT IS FUNDAMENTALLY DESIGNED FROM THE GROUND UP AS THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF JOURNALISM
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
