The summer reading list tucked into a special section of The Chicago Sun-Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer seemed innocuous enough.

There were books by beloved authors such as Isabel Allende and Min Jin Lee; novels by best sellers including Delia Owens, Taylor Jenkins Reid and Brit Bennett; and a novel by Percival Everett, a recent Pulitzer Prize winner.

There was just one issue: None of the book titles attributed to the above authors were real. They had been created by generative artificial intelligence.

It’s the latest case of bad A.I. making its way into the news. While generative A.I. has improved, there is still no way to ensure the systems produce accurate information. A.I. chatbots cannot distinguish between what is true and what is false, and they often make things up. The chatbots can spit out information and expert names with an air of authority.

Most of the book descriptions were fairly believable. It didn’t seem out of reach that Ms. Bennett would “explore family bonds tested by natural disasters,” or that Ms. Allende would pen another “multigenerational saga.”