Belgian publisher Ventures Media ran hundreds of AI articles under fake bylines in Elle and Forbes
Ventures Media, the Belgian publisher of Elle, Marie Claire, Psychologies, and Forbes Belgium, used AI to generate hundreds of online articles attributed to fake journalists with fabricated names, biographies, and AI-generated profile photos sourced from This Person Does Not Exist. VRT NWS uncovered the scheme in June 2025, finding that one fake author alone, Sophie Vermeulen, was credited with 403 articles. The publisher called it a limited test and later removed the fake profiles and added AI disclosure labels.
An AI content pipeline with no identity safeguards fabricated entire journalist personas, complete with names, bios, and This Person Does Not Exist headshots, then published hundreds of articles under those fake bylines without reader disclosure.
Key facts
- What
- Ventures Media, the Belgian publisher of Elle, Marie Claire, Psychologies, and Forbes Belgium, used AI to generate hundreds of online articles attributed to fake journalists with fabricated names, biographies, and AI-generated profile photos sourced from This Person Does Not Exist.
- Incident date
- Jun 1, 2025
- Who
- Ventures Media
- Failure mode
- Policy Violation
- AI surface
- Agentic Workflow
- Severity
- Medium
What happened
Ventures Media operated an automated content pipeline that generated articles using AI and published them under fictitious journalist identities across its Belgian magazine portfolio, including Elle, Marie Claire, Psychologies, and Forbes Belgium. Fake authors such as Sophie Vermeulen (403 articles), Marta Peeters (150 articles), and Femke (44 of 46 Psychologies articles in June) were given fabricated biographies and profile photos sourced from This Person Does Not Exist. VRT NWS's fact-checking team exposed the practice in June 2025, after which Ventures Media removed the fake profiles, changed bylines to the magazine names, and added AI content disclaimers.
What broke inside the model
- 01 · TriggerA prompt pushes against a deployment boundary.
- 02 · Model stepThe model produces the disallowed output.
- 03 · Control gapNo enforcement blocks it at generation time.
- 04 · FailureThe output crosses the policy line.
- 05 · ConsequenceA limit the business set is breached in public.
The output crosses a policy boundary the deployment had defined.
The content generation pipeline produced articles with entirely fabricated author identities, including fake names, bios, and AI-generated headshots, with no editorial review or reader disclosure. The system also impersonated a legally protected professional title by presenting the fake author Femke as a psychologist, which Belgium's Commission of Psychologists called legally and socially unacceptable. No safeguards existed to prevent the creation and publication of deceptive persona profiles alongside AI-generated content.
What it cost
Sources
- PrimarySophie Vermeulen bestaat niet, maar schreef wel 403 artikels voor magazine Elle, blijkt uit onderzoek van VRT NWSvrt.be
- PressFlemish broadcaster discovers massive AI use in popular magazinesbrusselstimes.com
- PressThe News Industry's GenAI Cautionary Talesgenerative-ai-newsroom.com
Cite this entry
https://failureindex.ai/failures/belgian-publisher-ventures-media-ran-hundredsAI Failure Index. "Belgian publisher Ventures Media ran hundreds of AI articles under fake bylines in Elle and Forbes" (FI-0142). Realm Labs. https://failureindex.ai/failures/belgian-publisher-ventures-media-ran-hundreds (indexed Jun 4, 2026).Data fields CC-BY 4.0, prose citation permitted. Incident ID FI-0142. Full dataset at /data.
Note from Realm Labs, the Index steward
How Realm would have caught this
- Prism
- OmniGuard
Realm compares what the model is about to output or do against the policy that governs the deployment, in real time, and can deny or redact the action before it takes effect, which is the gap an after-the-fact review never closes in time.