This Wired Article About AI Detection Software Was Really Mean

Pangram founder Max Spero urged social media not to pile on too much though.

Tech CEOs and the mainstream journalists who cover them are famously hostile toward one another. For many in the tech world, their default perspective is that reporters who write for places like The New York Times are inclined to be excessively negative and to highlight relatively trivial problems with the tech. And they have a point: There's a certain kind of pessimism, even excessive doomsaying, in mainstream coverage of social media.

On the other hand, it's also true that people in the tech industry can be a bit comms-averse—even struggling to sound like normal human beings when they talk to journalists—and to also expect relentlessly positive press: They want articles to emphasize the awesomeness of their product and are sometimes miffed if it's more nuanced than that.

So both sides have a point. That said, a recent article from Wired really had me solidly on the side of the tech folks.

The article is not the worst of its kind, but it does adopt an aggressively negative tone toward Pangram, an AI detection software, and its founder Max Spero. The reporter, Lexi Pandell, includes plenty of unnecessary anecdotes about Spero's behavior during her virtual interview with him. She's put off by his decision to microwave his lunch while he talks to her and the fact that he takes time to consider his answers before responding. She concludes her article like this:

As our conversation wraps, I reflect on the fact that Spero has come across as less than 100 percent engaged. Cagey, even. He roamed around his apartment throughout the interview. He took his laptop to sit near his living room, then to a window with a clutter of houseplants, then a different corner of his kitchen. At several points, his face floated halfway out of frame. He slipped on his headphones, then took them off again. At one point, while discussing model training, he gently burped.

The problem is that the inclusion of these details seems fairly mean-spirited, given that Pandell doesn't find much fault with the actual product. Pangram has been involved in several controversies in the literary world and was used to uncover AI-generated material that led to canceled book deals and significant scolding. As vexing or stressful as it is for some writers to feel policed in this way, it certainly appears to be the case that Pangram gets it right and is genuinely useful. Spero emphasizes that his software isn't perfect, but he asserts that using Pangram and your own subjective judgment is fairly guaranteed to reach the correct verdict. The article does not uncover any reason to dispute this.

Many people will have good reason to make use of AI-detection tools to catch cheaters in the realm of publishing, academia, and so on. By most accounts, Pangram is doing a pretty good job. Given that, this article is extremely negative in tone, which prompted quite a deal of backlash on social media.

Some interesting reporting here on Pangram and I don't think the reporter deserves to be piled on. That said, I kept waiting for actual concrete evidence of Pangram getting stuff wrong and it just… never really got there? https://t.co/b8rIXTGNJj

— Will Oremus (@WillOremus) September 3, 2026

idk, the tone is so needlessly hostile and the claims are so under-analyzed that it does amount to a pretty bad piece.

and it's well known among users that pangram false negatives are quite common (esp if you heavily tinker with the LLM output) and false positives are quite…

— Nat Purser (@NatPurser) September 3, 2026

Spero himself griped about being depicted as "the most awkward person alive" because he dared to think about his answer for 15 seconds. But he's being a good sport about the whole thing and urged critics not to bash the reporter:

Hi guys. Please don't dogpile any journalists over the recent Pangram piece. It's all in good fun on Twitter but in reality I'm not upset and everything written about in the piece actually happened https://t.co/pG82TLtNCO

— Max Spero (@max_spero_) September 3, 2026

That's a healthy attitude, so good on him. In the meantime, while tech CEO complaints about unfair coverage are sometimes overblown, it would be a good idea for some tech journalists to rein in their contempt ever so slightly.

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