Berlingske journalist suspended for AI-generated fake quotes and experts
A Berlingske journalist was suspended after an article about a Danish economic council report contained two misquoted passages and a fabricated section with false expert quotes, reportedly generated by AI tools used contrary to the newspaper's guidelines.
What happened
On 26 May 2026, Berlingske published an article about a Danish economic council report on drinking water that contained two misquoted passages from the council's statement. The first quote omitted qualifications about uncertainty, and the second paraphrased rather than quoted council language about toxic chemicals.
The article also included a fabricated concluding section with quotes attributed to three experts: Professor Hans Estrup Andersen from Denmark's Technical University, Professor Lars Mogensen from Aarhus University, and Professor Anne Kjær Nielsen from DTU. According to Berlingske, this passage was entirely generated and removed after publication.
The errors were discovered after a journalist from Information newspaper contacted Berlingske about the inaccuracies. Berlingske editor-in-chief Tom Jensen stated the journalist had used the newspaper's internal AI tool in violation of clear guidelines requiring human editorial review of AI outputs and prohibiting AI from writing articles.
Reported impact
The newspaper retracted and corrected the article and suspended the unnamed journalist pending investigation. Jensen acknowledged the breaches of internal policy stating: 'Both of these rules were obviously not followed in this case.'
Index analysis
Berlingske stated it uses AI tools like many media organizations but emphasized the critical importance of how they are deployed. The newspaper's guidelines require human journalists to process all AI inputs and explicitly forbid AI from authoring articles.
Governance controls
Following the incident, Berlingske ordered an external consultant to review all other articles produced by the suspended journalist to identify any additional violations.
Classification
Sources and evidence
Sources not yet published
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