Margaret Atwood criticizes Claude over wrong answer
The author said she used Anthropic's chatbot once and found its response unreliable.
Why it matters
The comments add a prominent literary voice to ongoing concerns about AI chatbot reliability and hallucinations. They underscore the reputational risk for AI systems used as information tools.
The key points
- 1.Atwood said she tried Claude once and found its answer wrong.
- 2.Her example involved a query about the series Father Brown.
- 3.The remarks focused on AI reliability, not new regulation or product changes.
Margaret Atwood said at the Babell Literary and Cultural Festival in Porto, Portugal, that she had used Anthropic's Claude chatbot exactly once and came away unimpressed. According to Deadline's recap cited by The Verge, Atwood said Claude gave her the wrong answer when she asked about the British detective series Father Brown, framing the issue as "garbage in, garbage out."
Sources & original reporting
This brief summarizes and links to reporting from the publishers below.
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