Robby Soave, a writer for Reason, expresses his criticism of an article by Lexi Pandell from Wired about AI detection software called Pangram and its founder Max Spero. The article's tone is described as "aggressively negative" towards Spero, with the reporter seemingly taking issue with his behavior during their virtual interview, including microwaving lunch and considering answers before responding. The key criticism is that Pandell's inclusion of these anecdotes appears "fairly mean-spirited", given that the article does not raise any significant flaws in Pangram's performance. Soave suggests that the article's tone is overly negative, particularly since Pangram has been successful in uncovering AI-generated material and preventing book deals from being canceled.
Written by the local model on 2026-09-06,
using this article's own text rather than the other coverage of the
same event (that is the story summary below).
Tech CEOs and the mainstream journalists who cover them are famously hostile toward one another.
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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.
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And they have a point: There's a certain kind of pessimism, even excessive doomsaying, in mainstream coverage of social media.
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You are reading Free Media from Robby Soave and Reason.
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Get more of Robby's on-the-media, disinformation, and free speech coverage.
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.
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So both sides have a point.
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That said, a recent article from Wired really had me solidly on the side of the tech folks.
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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.
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it → adopt → Pangram
The reporter, Lexi Pandell, includes plenty of unnecessary anecdotes about Spero's behavior during her virtual interview with him.
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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.
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he → put → answers
She concludes her article like this:
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As our conversation wraps, I reflect on the fact that Spero has come across as less than 100 percent engaged.
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He roamed around his apartment throughout the interview.
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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.
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At several points, his face floated halfway out of frame.
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He slipped on his headphones, then took them off again.
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At one point, while discussing model training, he gently burped.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The article does not uncover any reason to dispute this.
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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.
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By most accounts, Pangram is doing a pretty good job.
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Given that, this article is extremely negative in tone, which prompted quite a deal of backlash on social media.
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Some interesting reporting here on Pangram and I don't think the reporter deserves to be piled on.
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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
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are so under-analyzed that it does amount to a pretty bad piece.
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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…
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— 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.
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But he's being a good sport about the whole thing and urged critics not to bash the reporter:
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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
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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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This Week on Free Media
I am joined by Amber Duke to discuss President Donald Trump's remarks on data centers and the state of the Iran war.
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Worth Watching
Next week, I'll be debating the popular YouTube streamer Destiny on the likelihood that COVID-19 originated in a lab leak or as animal spillover.
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