Fidesz Member of Parliament and former state secretary Panyi Miklós published a Facebook commemoration of the Arad martyrs on Tuesday, but the list of names in his post proved to be incorrect after artificial-intelligence–assisted transcription introduced errors.
Panyi likely intended to share the same tableau by Barabás Miklós that also appears on the martyrs' Wikipedia page. During upload or editing, however, three names that are not recorded as Arad martyrs appeared in the post: Pötterbing Ödön, Ormányi Károly and Greviczy Károly.
Based on the nature of the mistakes, Pötterbing Ödön appears to be an incorrect rendering of Poeltenberg Ernő; the Ormányi Károly and Greviczy Károly errors seem partly caused by confusion around the noble title abbreviation "Grf." that appears before the names on the original lithograph. In the historical print, Leiningen‑Westerburg Károly and Vécsey Károly carry the "Grf." abbreviation, which may have confused an automated transcription process.
After Telex reported on the post on Wednesday morning, Panyi Miklós deleted the Facebook entry.
He was not the only one affected by AI mistakes: right‑wing influencer Szakács István also relied on artificial intelligence to reconstruct a group picture of the Arad martyrs. His shared image was far more visibly flawed: observers found that only in a single case was the correct name matched to the correct face, while the other figures had mismatches between portrait and name.
Why this matters
The incidents highlight that automated text and image processing systems can introduce errors when handling historical sources, especially if the original material is an old, hard‑to‑read print or lithograph. Failing to perform human fact‑checking in such cases can spread misunderstandings and create false records about historical figures.
Related context
The national identities of the military officers executed at Arad in 1849 are a complex subject: sources include individuals identified as Serb‑Croat, German and Armenian, and integrating these identities into contemporary conceptions of Hungarian nationhood requires specialist historical analysis. The Hungarian publication HVG has published a related overview on this topic.
Summary
The post deleted by Panyi Miklós and the AI‑generated image from Szakács István both underscore the need for careful human verification when using automated transcription or image generation for commemorations and historical material.
