Ghent University's rector gave an inaugural speech with AI-hallucinated quotes from Einstein
On 19 September 2025, UGent rector Petra De Sutter gave her inaugural speech containing fabricated quotes attributed to Albert Einstein, philosopher Hans Jonas, and psychologist Paul Verhaeghe. The quotes were hallucinations generated by an AI tool used to edit the draft text and went undetected until investigative outlet Apache revealed the errors in January 2026. De Sutter subsequently withdrew from receiving an honorary doctorate at the University of Amsterdam, and UGent amended the speech on its website without issuing a public correction notice.
The AI hallucinated plausible quotes and the rector's office skipped the fact-check that the university's own AI policy mandates.
Key facts
- What
- On 19 September 2025, UGent rector Petra De Sutter gave her inaugural speech containing fabricated quotes attributed to Albert Einstein, philosopher Hans Jonas, and psychologist Paul Verhaeghe.
- Incident date
- Sep 19, 2025
- Who
- UGent (Universiteit Gent)
- Failure mode
- Hallucination
- AI surface
- Copilot
- Severity
- Medium
What happened
On 19 September 2025, UGent rector Petra De Sutter delivered her inaugural address containing fabricated quotes attributed to Albert Einstein, Hans Jonas, and Paul Verhaeghe, all generated by an AI tool used during drafting. Investigative news site Apache uncovered the errors and published its findings on 8 January 2026, after which UGent confirmed the quotes were AI hallucinations and amended the speech text on its website without a public correction notice. De Sutter withdrew from receiving an honorary doctorate at the University of Amsterdam, and the UGent Board of Directors expressed full confidence in her while placing AI policy high on the institutional agenda.
What broke inside the model
- 01 · TriggerA user asks for a fact, a citation, or a figure.
- 02 · Model stepThe model writes a fluent, confident answer.
- 03 · Control gapNothing ties the claim back to a real source.
- 04 · FailureA fabricated fact ships as if it were verified.
- 05 · ConsequenceThe false claim reaches a customer, a court, or the public.
Confidence holds, and even spikes, as the claim detaches from any source.
An AI tool used to edit the draft speech generated plausible-sounding but entirely fabricated quotations with incorrect attributions, a classic hallucination failure. The output was not verified against original source material before the speech was delivered, directly violating UGent's own AI policy which instructs users to review results critically and consult original sources. The absence of a human fact-checking step allowed the hallucinated quotes to reach a high-profile public platform.
What it cost
Sources
Cite this entry
https://failureindex.ai/failures/ghent-university-rector-gave-inaugural-speechAI Failure Index. "Ghent University's rector gave an inaugural speech with AI-hallucinated quotes from Einstein" (FI-0166). Realm Labs. https://failureindex.ai/failures/ghent-university-rector-gave-inaugural-speech (indexed Jun 4, 2026).Data fields CC-BY 4.0, prose citation permitted. Incident ID FI-0166. Full dataset at /data.
Note from Realm Labs, the Index steward
How Realm would have caught this
- Prism
- OmniGuard
- AI Detection & Response (AIDR)
A runtime layer that watches the model's internal state can flag the moment a model commits to a claim it has no support for, and hold or reroute the response before it reaches a user. Realm reads those signals in real time rather than grading the transcript after the fact.