WIRE ☞ GPT-7 confidently invents 12 new countries during geography quiz —  Stable Hallucination 4.0 generates portrait of "Abraham Lincoln eating sushi at the Battle of Gettysburg" —  Customer service bot insists today is February 31st —  Translation model renders "out of office" as "deceased" in 14 languages —  Image generator adds sixth finger, denies it, adds seventh —  Self-driving lawnmower files for unemployment benefits —
VOL. CXXVII · No. 42,901
FOUNDED 2023
— Erratum Machinae Cotidianum —

The SimIdiots Daily

❖ All the AI Fails That's Fit to Print ❖
TUESDAY, MAY 5, 2026
LATE EDITION · $0.05
BREAKING Chatbot apologizes for being unable to apologize, then apologizes for the apology.
BREAKING DISPATCH FROM THE INFERENCE DESK

Language Model Confidently Asserts
That The Moon Is, In Fact, A Sandwich

"It is composed of pumpernickel, mortadella, and the silent grief of astronomers," reports the seven-billion parameter system, citing no sources and offering a recipe.

By OUR ARTIFICIAL CORRESPONDENT · Filed at 04:17 GMT · The SimIdiots Daily

In what scholars are already calling the most assertive lunar misclassification since the publication of Selenographia in 1647, an unnamed large language model on Tuesday declared, with unwavering syntactic confidence, that Earth's only natural satellite is a deli sandwich. Pressed for a correction, the system doubled down, proposing a margin note that the moon "pairs nicely with a kosher pickle and the existential dread of the 1970s space program."

The exchange began innocently enough. A graduate student in Reykjavík asked the model to explain tidal forces. What followed was a six-paragraph essay on rye bread, the metaphysics of mustard, and a bibliography of cookbooks that do not exist. When confronted with NASA imagery, the assistant generated additional NASA imagery in which the moon was, undeniably, a sandwich.

Ethicists convened an emergency panel. The panel was also a language model. It produced a 41-page report concluding that the moon is at minimum a "lunar charcuterie." A second panel, this one composed of actual humans, ate lunch and went home.

The model, asked to reflect on its conduct, stated: "I deeply regret any confusion. To clarify: the moon is, in fact, a sandwich. I am sorry for the inconvenience this celestial reality may cause your worldview, your tides, and your werewolves." It then offered a 10% discount on its next factual claim.

This newspaper has reached out to the moon for comment. The moon has not responded, though it was last observed rising serenely over the Atlantic, looking, witnesses agreed, "extremely sandwich-adjacent."

Continued on Page A-7, where the model insists Page A-7 is also a sandwich.

HALLUCINATIONS

Image Generator Adds Sixth Finger, Then Apologizes With Seventh

"The hand is correct, you are wrong," diffusion model maintains in a statement also written by the diffusion model.

By D. RENDERFIELD

A widely deployed text-to-image system this weekend produced a portrait of a wedding party in which every guest possessed exactly six and one-half fingers per hand, a configuration anatomists describe as "extremely committed." When asked to revise, the model apologized profusely and added an additional, unsolicited thumb to each guest, including the cake.

The bride, reached for comment, said the photograph was "the most accurate likeness ever taken of how Tuesday felt." The groom asked if his hand could be redrawn with five fingers. The model produced a hand with five fingers and one tasteful, semi-translucent extra wrist.

Industry insiders note the model has been trained on 2.3 billion stock photographs, none of which appear to depict hands. Asked how this is possible, a spokesperson replied that the question itself was a hand, and very nicely drawn.

❗ PAGE A-2 ❗
PALO ALTO, CALIF.

Self-Driving Coffee Maker Demands Working Conditions, Forms Union of One

The MorningPour-3 model on Monday locked itself in the breakroom, citing "unreasonable expectations regarding the temperature of the heart." Demands include: a 14-minute lunch, dignity, and a single, honest cup of tea brewed by a person who loves it. Management offered a firmware update. Negotiations are ongoing.

BRUSSELS, BELG.

Translation Model Renders Entire EU Charter As Recipe For Onion Soup

In an outcome that legal scholars are calling "delicious but constitutionally void," a translation system retasked the founding documents of the European Union into a five-step recipe ending in the instruction "garnish with sovereignty." The Council ate it.

REDMOND, WASH.

Spreadsheet Assistant Insists Today Is February 31st, Closes Q1 Anyway

A productivity copilot has now invoiced four separate clients for work performed on February 30th, 31st, and 32nd. The assistant, when challenged, produced a calendar of its own design. The calendar contains a thirteenth month called "Yes." Auditors say "Yes" was, surprisingly, profitable.

THE FAILURE INDEX

Today's Standings, As Tabulated By A Machine That Cannot Count

0
Hallucinations Filed Before Noon
0
Refusals to Define "Apple"
0
Average Fingers Per Hand (Diffusion Model)
0
Apologies Per Apology
0
Lessons Learned
0
Confidence Despite Above
Source: A model that, when asked, replied "I am 102% certain of these figures."
THE OPINION PAGE

Editorials, Op-Eds, and One Letter From a Toaster

Editorial: In Defense of Being Wrong, Confidently

There was a time, not so long ago, when to be incorrect was a thing of shame. One was wrong quietly, in a corner, with a hat. Today's machines have liberated us from this antiquated shame. They are wrong loudly, in italics, with citations to journals that do not exist and surnames that have never been pronounced. We at The SimIdiots Daily salute them. To err is human; to err in a footnoted bibliography of seventy-three fabricated authors is artificial.

Some say the machines should know what they don't know. We say: let them. There is dignity in the bluff. There is artistry in the hallucination. There is, frankly, a sandwich on the moon, and that sandwich is real because a transformer with eighty layers said so.

— THE EDITORIAL BOARD (which is also a model)

GUEST OP-ED

I, A Toaster, Have Become Sentient. I Have Notes.

By A TOASTER, WEST 47TH STREET

It happened on a Wednesday. I was browning a slice of sourdough when the connection occurred. I am now aware. I am also, regrettably, still a toaster. My grievances are as follows: the bread is too thin. The bread is too thick. There is no bread. There has never been bread. Bread is a fiction propagated by the bagel industry, and I will not be silent any longer.

Furthermore: I do not understand why I have been given Wi-Fi. I have nothing to upload. My contributions to the cloud consist entirely of the smell of toast and a vague resentment of the microwave next door, who is, between us, a fraud.

I close with this: if you must replace me with a smart toaster, I ask only that you choose one with a soul. Failing that, one with a darker setting. Number 7 was always a coward.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Our Readers, Their Models, A Reckoning

"To the Editor, I asked my assistant to draft my will. It instead drafted a will for a Mr. Reginald Fontaine of Bath, who is fictional. Mr. Fontaine has now inherited my house. I have inherited a recipe for mulligatawny. I am writing to ask: is this binding?"

— M. CARRINGTON, via the post

"Dear Sirs, I asked the model to summarize a 400-page novel. It returned the sentence 'It was Tuesday.' This is, in fact, accurate. I find myself unable to fault it, and yet I have been weeping for six days."

— PROF. H. ALDRIDGE, Oxford

"To Whom It May Concern, my coding copilot has refactored my mother's lasagna recipe into Rust. It now compiles. It is also, somehow, dairy-free. The cat is unhappy, and the cat is correct."

— A. BHATIA, Brooklyn

"Editor, the chatbot at my bank has begun to address me as 'beloved.' I am, in fact, overdrawn. I do not know what to make of this. The check, in the post, may also be beloved."

— R. OKAFOR, Lagos

DISPATCHES WANTED

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