De Sutter, who for the Green Party earlier served as Europe's first trans cabinet minister in PM De Croo's federal government, spoke at Ghent University on 19 September 2025 at the start of the academic year. She quoted philosopher Hans Jonas and psychologist Paul Verhaeghe, among others. She also attributed the statement ‘Dogma is the enemy of progress’ to Albert Einstein. Apache's investigation shows that the three quotes used are fabricated. They appear to be hallucinations of an AI tool.
The UGent press service explains that things went wrong when the draft text was edited by AI. On the university’s website the speech has twice been amended since September. The first time was in October and the second time was recently in January. This happened after Apache pointed out the errors. There is now a disclaimer accompanying the text on the website. The speech with the hallucinated quotations can still be viewed in the video on the website .
In the speech, Ghent University has now replaced the quotations with paraphrases and also corrected the sources that turned out to be incorrect. The blunder is embarrassing, especially since Ghent University itself has a very clear AI policy. ‘If you use AI tools irresponsibly, you may provide information without sources, the sources may be fabricated (hallucinations), or the information may be accompanied by incorrect sources,’ it states.
‘Always review the results critically; it is still up to you to read the source material thoroughly. You should also always consult the original source,’ Ghent University adds.