Entitled “Ireland’s obsession with fake tanning is problematic,” the text, published on Thursday, quickly became one of the most reads on the site. The Irish Times took it down Friday and on Sunday considers that the article “constitutes a rupture between The Irish Times and the locals of the area".

The author told The Guardian that they had used the tool on around 80% of the article.

The opinion piece ran from a contributor bylined as Adriana Acosta-Cortez, a 29-year-old Ecuadorian healthcare worker with the profile picture of a woman with blue hair. However, this was not a real person, as both the profile picture and her biography were made up.

The article’s author pointed out that the profile photo used was created with the Dalle-2 image generator.

The Irish student says the article was written by him in order to provoke a discussion over identity politics and to “make his friends laugh.”

In a press release, Ruadhan Mac Cormaic, the newspaper’s editor-in-chief, said that “the incident also showed our differences in pre-publishing procedures. It also showed some challenges associated with AI and the communication bodies. Like with others, we learn and adapt.”