Anne Hoffmann, the editor-in-chief of the German weekly magazine The Aktuelle, has been fired immediately due to the publication of an ‘interview’ prepared by AI with former Formula 1 driver Michael Schumacher. This is announced by the publisher of the magazine in a statement. The director of the publishing house has apologized to Schumacher and his family.
Schumacher suffered serious brain damage in a skiing accident in 2013. Since then, his privacy has been closely guarded by his family and statements about his health are rarely made.
published last week The Aktuelle an ‘interview’ based on artificial intelligence that answered questions as if it were Schumacher himself. In small print at the bottom of the piece, the magazine had stated that the answers were not Schumacher’s. “This tasteless and misleading article should never have appeared. It in no way meets the journalistic standard that we – and our readers – expect from a publisher like Funke,” director Bianca Pohlmann said in a statement.
On Thursday, Schumacher’s family announced that they would go to court because of the publication, it is not yet known whether the apologies and Hoffmann’s departure will change that.