Business Insider yanked 40 essays with suspect bylines. Are they related?
Story by Scott Nover, Aaron Schaffer • 1d
A raft of articles have been retracted from publications including Business Insider and Wired in recent months, with links between them suggesting a possible broader scheme to pass off fake stories that these outlets now suspect were written using artificial intelligence.
A Washington Post probe into the retractions found a connection between Onyeka Nwelue, the purported author of one of 38 essays removed this week by Business Insider, and someone using the name Margaux Blanchard, two of whose stories were previously removed by the same outlet. In recent months SFGate, Index on Censorship and Wired also retracted articles under the Blanchard byline, after it was identified as bogus by the British publication Press Gazette.
Impersonation and deceit are age-old problems, but the rise of easy-to-use AI tools could mean a proliferation of fake news articles that might appear real — especially to the untrained eye.
The nonprofit Reporters Without Borders told The Post these stories have the “hallmarks” of generative AI, but noted that it’s difficult to prove. “Advances in AI are making it possible to develop insidious and highly dangerous attacks at low cost,” said Vincent Berthier, head of the organization’s tech and journalism desk. “Whether it’s fake journalists, phony media outlets, or deepfakes, assaults on the credibility of the media are becoming increasingly apparent.”
Business Insider Editor in Chief Jamie Heller explained to staff Tuesday in an email, obtained by The Post, that the report of a phony writer spurred a fuller investigation that turned up dozens of suspicious articles under various bylines.
“We recently learned that a freelance contributor misrepresented their identity in two first-person essays written for Business Insider. As soon as this came to light, we took down the essays and began an investigation,” Heller said. “As part of this process, we’ve removed additional first-person essays from the site due to concerns about the authors’ identity or veracity. No news articles or videos were found to have this issue.”
On Tuesday, Business Insider removed 38 pieces that had been published under bylines other than Blanchard. Business Insider deleted the author pages of 19 individuals, including Blanchard and Nwelue, and replaced their essays with editor’s notes.
The website’s investigation involved reviewing “tens of thousands of records,” Business Insider spokesperson Ari Isaacman D’Angelo said in a statement to The Post. But it hadn’t determined whether artificial intelligence was used to produce the yanked essays, she said, noting that AI-detection tools are often unreliable.
There were odd overlaps between stories. “I grew up feeling insecure about my name,” read one under the byline Nate Giovanni. “Most of my male family members had masculine names like Butch, David, and Apollo, but I was always the bud [sic] of the joke with the name Amarilis.” The uncommon name Amarilis also appeared in the byline of another retracted essay.
Essays under Giovanni’s byline feature contradictory information. One piece, published in December 2024, refers to the author having two teenage daughters and a 2-and-a-half-year-old son. Another, published three months later mentions two sons, aged 8 and 9. Pieces that ran in May and July — about house-sitting around the world and applying to PhD programs — make no mention of a family at all.
Nine essays with the byline Tim Stevensen also contain contradictions. In one article, he claims his daughters are in their 20s and his son is a teenager; in another one published this year he says they’re 11, 13 and 15.
Heller wrote in her staff memo this week that Business Insider had “bolstered our verification protocols” but did not say how. The 40 essays have been replaced by editor’s notes that say they have been removed because they “didn’t meet Business Insider’s standards.”
The news site, owned by the German media conglomerate Axel Springer, won a Pulitzer Prize in 2022.
On Aug. 21, Wired wrote a longer mea culpa about the article it published under Blanchard’s name, with the headline “How WIRED Got Rolled by an AI Freelancer.”
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/technology/business-insider-yanked-40-essays-with-suspect-bylines-are-they-related/ar-AA1M0fAD
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