Plot Twist: Summer Reading List Filled with Books That Don’t Even Exist In a beach-read-gone-wrong saga, the Chicago Sun-Times and Philadelphia Inquirer proudly published their summer reading lists featuring several thrilling titles… that were completely made up by artificial intelligence. Yes, dear readers, these books are as fictional as the fiction they were meant to recommend. Among the “must-reads” were books no one could find, by authors no one had heard of, and quotes that seemed to come straight from a fortune cookie generator with a personality disorder. How did this literary catfish happen? A freelance writer apparently outsourced his entire brain to a chatbot and forgot the crucial step called checking if anything was real. The result: an AI fever dream passed off as your summer guide to literary delight. The newspapers have promised to “take greater care” in the future, ideally by making sure the books on the list actually exist. Full comedy of errors here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2025/05/20/chicago-sun-times-philadelphia-inquirer-ai-books-summer-reading/