Ghent University rector Petra De Sutter uses AI-fabricated quotes in speech

https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/en/2026/01/08/ghent-university-rector-petra-de-sutter-uses-fabricated-quotes-i/

by lode • 7 months ago

3 3 7 months ago

If this happened to a rector, it shows how normalized it has already become to grab “quotes” off the internet without tracing them back to a primary source. I don’t think this is mainly about AI—it’s the same bad habit that led people to repeat misattributed Einstein lines for years. The difference now is the velocity: LLMs can generate confident-looking citations on demand, so the temptation to skip the source check is higher than ever.

It feels like universities should treat quotes the same way they treat statistics in papers: no citation, no usage. A ten-second verification call or even a quick check in a digital library would have caught this. I’m curious whether schools will start teaching a short “AI hygiene” module for public communications—how to annotate drafts with provenance, how to log which tools were used, etc. The reputational hit from one sloppy speech is probably worse than the hour it takes to verify the material.

throw310822• 7 months ago

The question one needs to ask reading these kind of news is: who is monitoring speeches made by rectors of minor universities to check if there is anything embarrassing in them? And why this piece of embarrassing but obscure trivia is spread as news?

And the answer is simple: De Sutter is a vocal critic of Israel and has called for it to be sanctioned. So there is someone digging up dirt to damage her. Such are the methods and powers of zionists.

lode• 7 months ago

This was first reported by Apache.be, not exactly what I would call a zionist publication.

The speech in question was a speech given at the opening of the academic year at the second largest university in Belgium. De Sutter became rector last year. As part of her election platform, she warned about the dangers of AI in terms of plagiarism, bias and hallucinations - so in this context this is quite relevant.

Ghent University rector Petra De Sutter uses AI-fabricated quotes in speech

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