FAZ pulls Thuringian premier's guest article after AI probe finds quotes unverifiable; Voigt camp says AI use is 2026 reality

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung has taken down a guest article by Thuringian minister president Mario Voigt after the transparency portal FragDenStaat found likely AI-generated passages and quotes from experts that could not be verified.

The investigation by FragDenStaat

Using detection tools Pangram and GPTZero, FragDenStaat analysed 11 of Voigt's speeches and articles. Pangram identified an AI share above 50 per cent in nine of them, with three texts flagged as fully machine-generated. Among four newspaper contributions examined, the programme attributed a 100 per cent AI score to three. The portal also checked a speech Voigt delivered on 29 January 2025 to commemorate the victims of National Socialism; both Pangram and GPTZero indicated it was generated with high certainty by AI. A New Year's address and a funeral oration were also among the material that yielded suspicious results.

In the FAZ guest article, titled "Smartphone 14, Social Media 16" and published on 13 August 2025, Voigt advocated that children under 14 not own a smartphone and that access to social media be limited to 16-year-olds and older. He called for a school ban on smartphones and a dedicated digital competence subject. The article contained direct quotations by psychologist Jonathan Haidt, neurobiologist Gerald Hüther and neuroscientist Manfred Spitzer. FragDenStaat could not verify the quotes; Spitzer himself told the portal he did not believe he wrote the sentence attributed to him in that exact form.

The FAZ response

On Wednesday 10 June 2026 the FAZ said it had depublished the piece and removed it from its archive. The newspaper's AI guidelines state that it will not publish original contributions with machine‑generated text unless the fact of generation is the core of the story and is disclosed. "In the case of guest contributions we rely on them being human‑made and on direct and indirect quotes being correct," the FAZ explained. It had asked the Thuringian state chancellery whether the article was AI‑generated and whether the verbatim quotations were accurate. According to the newspaper the chancellery replied with only "general pointers." The FAZ judged that to be insufficient and withdrew the article.

Voigt and the chancellery

Questioned about AI use, Voigt told the Berlin daily Tagesspiegel that speeches were prepared by his office and that if any passage had been written with AI assistance he would not "tear anyone's head off." He sees himself as a proponent of modern tools and encourages state employees to use them. A spokesperson for the chancellery confirmed that the office deploys AI "in a supportive capacity for the drafting of speeches, texts and contributions," adding that there is no general labelling obligation for text created or supported with AI. The same spokeswoman dismissed the outcry: "I cannot understand the excitement. We are writing the year 2026." She argued that what matters is who takes responsibility for content.

Plagiarism backdrop

The dispute over AI usage has added to earlier credibility questions for Voigt. The Technical University of Chemnitz reviewed his doctoral dissertation and subsequently stripped him of his doctorate. Voigt has filed an objection and, if necessary, plans to take the case to an administrative court.