[Reed's] litany of errors in 2026 includes deadnaming and misgendering a competing trans journalist who broke a story for one of her competitors! This was seven months ago, and the deadname is still up as of writing.
This wasn’t just any story. It was Nate Zuke’s first article that we can find. Many of you have already read it: ‘She’d Never Changed Her Gender Marker. Kansas Invalidated Her License Anyway.’
It was excellent reporting; arguably one of the most important trans news stories written by a trans journalist this year.
And it was Erin Reed who deadnamed him to her audience of hundreds of thousands.
It is unclear how Erin Reed would have found Nate Zuke’s deadname without AI. As of Sep. 2026, we could find no bylines under his deadname, either at the outlet he published this story in, or anywhere else. We found nothing in his public presence that would connect him to his deadname. We also found no public presence under his deadname whatsoever.
Archived versions of Assigned Media’s coverage from the day it went live, as well as posts by other journalists tagging Nate Zuke who broke the story, show that this story was never published under any name other than ‘Nate Zuke’.
We checked across the internet, and used three different search engines. The only documented proof of the existence of anyone with that name is from public court records in a different state from where he is known to live, and where we have no reason to believe he has ever lived in.
One explanation is that this name was somewhere in the AI training database, and that it (accurately or not) attributed that name to Nate Zuke.
Another explanation is that an LLM hallucinated his gender, and made up a woman's name for him. This is a documented problem with some LLMs, with this error even appearing from cis people's names.
Either way, Reed published a trans man's deadname, real or imagined.
That's... Holy shit, ew.
Edit: Just want to say that I've been continuing to read this article on and off, and sections 6.1 to 6.4 are 100% evidence of extensive LLM usage, literally just copy–pasting in huge chunks of text. Even though EITM has only come to my attention recently, I'm really disappointed.