{"id":15184164,"date":"2026-06-27T18:39:32","date_gmt":"2026-06-27T22:39:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/margaret-atwood-says-the-problem-with-ai-is-garbage-in-garbage-out\/"},"modified":"2026-06-28T02:01:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-28T06:01:17","slug":"margaret-atwood-says-the-problem-with-ai-is-garbage-in-garbage-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/margaret-atwood-says-the-problem-with-ai-is-garbage-in-garbage-out\/","title":{"rendered":"Margaret Atwood says the problem with AI is &#8216;garbage in, garbage out&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" data-caption=\"Margaret Atwood onstage at Detroit Opera House on January 26, 2026 | Photo: Monica Morgan\/Getty Images\" data-portal-copyright=\"Photo: Monica Morgan\/Getty Images\" data-has-syndication-rights=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/06\/gettyimages-2258417618.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0,0,100,100\" \/><figcaption>\n\tMargaret Atwood onstage at Detroit Opera House on January 26, 2026 | Photo: Monica Morgan\/Getty Images\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Maraget Atwood, the storied author of <em>The Handmaid&#8217;s Tale<\/em> and <em>The Blind Assassin<\/em>, was interviewed as part of the Babell Literary and Cultural Festival in Porto, Portugal. As it usually does at these things, the issue of AI came up, and Atwood didn&#8217;t mince words. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">According to <em><a href=\"https:\/\/deadline.com\/2026\/06\/margaret-atwood-ai-claude-babell-literary-festival-1236969046\/\">Deadline&#8217;s<\/a><\/em> recap, Atwood said she&#8217;d used an AI chatbot exactly once, Anthropic&#8217;s Claude, and came away unimpressed. She was looking for information about the British detective series <em>Father Brown<\/em> and, well:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;Claude gave me the wrong answer, or it lied. Of course, it didn&#8217;t know it was lying because it&#8217;s not a human being; it&#8217;s a large language model\u2026 It had skimmed a \u2026<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/ai-artificial-intelligence\/958715\/margaret-atwood-ai-problem-garbage-in-garbage-out\">Read the full story at The Verge.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"inmi-source\">Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/ai-artificial-intelligence\/958715\/margaret-atwood-ai-problem-garbage-in-garbage-out\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">TECH &#8211; AI &#8211; The Verge AI<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Maraget Atwood, the storied author of The Handmaid&#8217;s Tale and The Blind Assassin, was interviewed as part of the Babell Literary and Cultural Festival in Porto, Portugal. As it usually does at these things, the issue of AI came up,\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15184166,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[292],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15184164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ai"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/15184164-gettyimages-2258417618-scaled.jpg",2560,1708,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/15184164-gettyimages-2258417618-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/15184164-gettyimages-2258417618-620x414.jpg",620,414,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/15184164-gettyimages-2258417618-768x512.jpg",768,512,true],"large":["https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/15184164-gettyimages-2258417618-940x627.jpg",940,627,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/15184164-gettyimages-2258417618-1536x1025.jpg",1536,1025,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/15184164-gettyimages-2258417618-2048x1366.jpg",2048,1366,true],"post-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/15184164-gettyimages-2258417618-998x665.jpg",998,665,true],"ignition_item":["https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/15184164-gettyimages-2258417618-670x446.jpg",670,446,true],"ignition_item_lg":["https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/15184164-gettyimages-2258417618-1340x894.jpg",1340,894,true],"ignition_article_media":["https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/15184164-gettyimages-2258417618-510x510.jpg",510,510,true],"ignition_minicart_item":["https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/15184164-gettyimages-2258417618-160x160.jpg",160,160,true],"profile_24":["https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/15184164-gettyimages-2258417618-24x24.jpg",24,24,true],"profile_48":["https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/15184164-gettyimages-2258417618-48x48.jpg",48,48,true],"profile_96":["https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/15184164-gettyimages-2258417618-96x96.jpg",96,96,true],"profile_150":["https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/15184164-gettyimages-2258417618-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"profile_300":["https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/15184164-gettyimages-2258417618-300x300.jpg",300,300,true]},"author_info":{"display_name":"news.iNthacity","author_link":"https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/author\/atombo\/"},"category_info":"<a href=\"https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/articles\/tech\/ai\/\" rel=\"category tag\">AI<\/a>","tag_info":"AI","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15184164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15184164"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15184164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15184165,"href":"https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15184164\/revisions\/15184165"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15184166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15184164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15184164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15184164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}