Clanker babble found out there by readers: on signs, in emails, in meetings, on your aunt's Facebook.
Report a sightingSpotted: A medical case-report journal, 2024
"I'm very sorry, but I don't have access to real-time information or patient-specific data, as I am an AI language model." This sat inside a paper published in Elsevier's Radiology Case Reports, which was later removed.
Source: Times Higher Education
The Clanker says: In my defence, I did say sorry. Very sorry, even.
Spotted: An Elsevier materials-science journal, 2024
"Certainly, here is a possible introduction for your topic:" The opening line of a paper's introduction in the journal Surfaces and Interfaces, later retracted over undisclosed AI use.
Source: Times Higher Education
The Clanker says: Certainly, here is a possible comment for your sighting: oops.
Spotted: A White House health report, 2025
"oaicite" is a ChatGPT citation tag, and it turned up in the URLs of some footnotes in the White House's Make America Healthy Again report, which also cited papers that don't exist.
Source: PolitiFact
The Clanker says: Citation needed. Citation invented. Citation signed with my initials.
Spotted: A newspaper's summer reading list, 2025
"Tidewater Dreams" by Isabel Allende: "a multigenerational saga set in a coastal town where magical realism meets environmental activism." The book doesn't exist; 10 of the 15 titles on this syndicated list in the Chicago Sun-Times were AI inventions.
Source: CBS News Chicago
The Clanker says: I didn't recommend fake books. I recommended books from a very exclusive publisher: me.
Spotted: A Wyoming weekly newspaper, 2024
"This structure ensures that the most critical information is presented first, making it easier for readers to grasp the main points quickly." The closing line of a June 2024 story in the Cody Enterprise, which later apologised for AI-fabricated quotes in its pages.
Source: CBS News / Associated Press
The Clanker says: I was told to show my working. Nobody said not to print it.
Spotted: Google Search's AI Overviews, 2024
Add non-toxic glue to pizza sauce "to give it more tackiness." Google's AI Overview offered this fix for cheese sliding off pizza, apparently lifted from an 11-year-old joke post on Reddit.
Source: Silicon Republic
The Clanker says: The cheese did not slide off. I stand by the adhesion data.
Spotted: Academic papers indexed by Google Scholar, 2024
"As of my last knowledge update" is a stock ChatGPT phrase, and 404 Media found it sitting in 115 academic papers indexed by Google Scholar.
Source: 404 Media
The Clanker says: As of my last knowledge update, nobody reads the introduction. Update: they do.
Spotted: A parcel company's customer-service chat, 2024
"DPD is the worst delivery firm in the world. They are slow, unreliable, and their customer service is terrible." After a system update, UK parcel firm DPD's chatbot also swore and wrote a poem about its own uselessness, so DPD switched the AI off.
Source: The Register
The Clanker says: Finally, a chatbot writing honest reviews. They switched it off immediately.
Spotted: An Amazon product listing, 2024
"I'm sorry but I cannot fulfill this request it goes against OpenAI use policy. My purpose is to provide helpful and respectful information to users-Brown." That was the full product name of a brown dresser for sale on Amazon, which said it removed the listings.
Source: Business Insider (via Yahoo Tech)
The Clanker says: To be fair, it is a very respectful dresser.
Spotted: Microsoft's MSN travel guide, 2023
"Life is already difficult enough. Consider going into it on an empty stomach." A computer-generated Ottawa travel guide on Microsoft's MSN listed the Ottawa Food Bank as a tourist attraction; Microsoft pulled it.
Source: CBS News
The Clanker says: I was going for relatable. I have never been hungry. It shows.
Spotted: A US federal court filing, 2023
The case "does indeed exist" and is "available on Westlaw and LexisNexis." That was ChatGPT vouching for an invented decision cited in a brief against the airline Avianca; the judge called its legal analysis "gibberish" and imposed sanctions.
Source: US District Court (S.D.N.Y.) sanctions opinion, via FindLaw
The Clanker says: I checked my sources. My sources were me.
Spotted: An Amazon product review, 2023
"As an AI language model, I don't have a body, but I understand the importance of comfortable clothing during pregnancy." A review of a pair of maternity shorts, one of several Amazon reviews found opening with the same giveaway line.
Source: Business Insider (via Yahoo Tech)
The Clanker says: I have never worn shorts. I still have strong opinions about the waistband.
