Media

German magazine sacks editor after AI ‘interview’ with Michael Schumacher

Publisher apologises to family who say they are planning legal action against the weekly magazine

Copies of the German weekly magazine Die Aktuelle with the cover announcing a fake interview with Michael Schumacher on a shelf in a Berlin newsagent. Photograph: EPA
Copies of the German weekly magazine Die Aktuelle with the cover announcing a fake interview with Michael Schumacher on a shelf in a Berlin newsagent. Photograph: EPA
Sat Apr 22 2023 - 19:22

The publishers of a German magazine that ran an “interview” with Michael Schumacher generated by artificial intelligence (AI) have sacked the editor and apologised to the Formula One great’s family.

Seven-times world champion Schumacher, now 54, has not been seen in public since he suffered a serious brain injury in a skiing incident on a family holiday in the French Alps in December 2013.

His family said this week that they were planning legal action against weekly magazine Die Aktuelle, owned by the Essen-based Funke media group.

Funke apologised in a statement on its website www.funkemedien.de.

READ MORE

“This tasteless and misleading article should never have appeared. It in no way meets the standards of journalism that we – and our readers – expect from a publisher like Funke,” said Funke magazine’s managing director, Bianca Pohlmann.

“As a result of the publication of this article, immediate personnel consequences will be drawn. Die Aktuelle editor-in-chief Anne Hoffmann, who has held journalistic responsibility for the paper since 2009, will be relieved of her duties as of today.”

The latest edition of Die Aktuelle ran a front cover with a picture of a smiling Schumacher and the headline promising Michael Schumacher, the first interview. The strapline added: “it sounded deceptively real”.

Inside, it emerged that the “quotes” had been produced by AI.

Schumacher’s family maintains strict privacy about the former driver’s condition, with access limited to those closest to him.

“We live together at home. We do therapy. We do everything we can to make Michael better and to make sure he’s comfortable, and to simply make him feel our family, our bond,” Corinna Schumacher said in a 2021 Netflix documentary. “We’re trying to carry on as a family, the way Michael liked it and still does. And we are getting on with our lives.” – Reuters

(c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2023