Over the weekend, a controversy broke out in X that ended up exposing journalist Pablo Duggan to Sergio Kun Agüero. It all started when Duggan echoed a message that was circulating on the social network attributed to the former forward’s account, with content that was scandalous and racist in tone. The problem: the message was fake, generated with artificial intelligence.
Without verifying the information, Duggan replied with a lapidary comment: “The only thing Kun was missing was being racist.” The publication quickly went viral and reached the ears of Agüero himself, who responded with a mix of calm and forcefulness: “I just saw this. I know what your job is, but please, at least check first. How strange that you let yourself be fooled by AI. Thank you.”
Given the response and confirmation that the content was false, Duggan deleted the publication and publicly clarified his mistake: “I shared fake news here without knowing it about @aguerosergiokun. When I found out that it was AI I deleted it. I hope everyone does the same and does not spread things that are not true.” And he added: “It can happen, the important thing is to delete the false content.”
The episode once again put on the table the problem of misinformation generated by artificial intelligence and the speed with which the media and journalists replicate content without verifying its origin, even when it comes to serious accusations against public figures.
It is not the first time that a journalist falls into a trap of this type. The proliferation of AI tools capable of generating text, images and even screenshots that are indistinguishable from the real thing makes verification an unavoidable step before publishing. In that sense, the crossing with Agüero functioned as a public reminder: the speed of the networks cannot go ahead of the basic check.
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