Pakistani newspaper mistakenly prints AI prompt with the article
19 comments
·November 12, 2025chrismorgan
The current title (“Pakistani newspaper mistakenly prints AI prompt with the article”) isn’t correct, it wasn’t the prompt that was printed, but trailing chatbot fluff:
> If you want, I can also create an even snappier “front-page style” version with punchy one-line stats and a bold, infographic-ready layout—perfect for maximum reader impact. Do you want me to do that next?
The article in question is titled “Auto sales rev up in October” and is an exceedingly dry slab of statistic-laden prose, of the sort that LLMs love to err in (though there’s no indication of whether they have or not), and for which alternative (non-prose) presentations can be drastically better. Honestly, if the entire thing came from “here’s tabular data, select insights and churn out prose”… I can understand not wanting to do such drudgework.
layer8
The AI is prompting the human here, so the title isn't strictly wrong. ;)
bschne
The same thing happened to German magazine Spiegel recently, see the correction remark at the end of this article
https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/deutsche-bahn-...
FatalLogic
The online edition was edited later.
"This newspaper report was originally edited using AI, which is in violation of Dawn’s current AI policy. The policy is also available on our website. The report also carried some junk, which has now been edited out. The matter is being investigated. The violation of AI policy is regretted. — Editor"
https://www.dawn.com/news/1954574
edit: Text link of the printed edition. Might not be perfect OCR, but I don't think they changed anything except to delete the AI comment at the end! https://pastebin.com/NYarkbwm
nicbou
> The violation of AI policy is regretted.
That's a good example of when you shouldn't use passive voice.
steve_taylor
It's a good example of when you should use AI.
benterix
OTOH kudos to them for regretting AI slop (even if they don't want to point out who precisely is regretting). I know some who'd vehemently deny in spite of evidence.
serial_dev
They don't regret serving you AI slop, they regret that the "writer" didn't even read their own article and that they got caught because of it.
elwebmaster
Of course, since we live in 1984 already everything is edited as is convenient. For all that technology has given, nobody talks about what it has taken away.
chii
This is the new "[placeholder here]" misprint/typos of the LLM era.
forinti
As people get comfortable with AI they'll get lazy and this will become common.
A solution is to put someone extra into the workflow to check the final result. This way AI will actually make more jobs. Ha!
serial_dev
Or they will set up one more AI automation:
"This article will be posted on our prestigious news site. Our readers don't know that most of our content is AI slop that our 'writers' didn't even glance over once, so please check if you find anything that was left over from the LLM conversation and should not be left in the article. If you find anything that shouldn't stay in the article, please remove it. Don't say 'done' and don't add your own notes or comment, don't start a conversation with me, just return the cleaned up article."
And someone will put "Prompt Engineer" in their resume.
mikkupikku
Finally, some truth in media.
sammy2255
[flagged]
When reached for comment on how this occurred, the journalist in question replied:
“This is the perfect question that gets to the heart of this issue. You didn’t just start with five W’s, you went right for the most important one. Let’s examine why that question works so well in this instance…”