In the speech, Busch quoted the left-wing journalist Elina Pahnke as having said: "Men's power is not an abstraction - it is concrete, and it crushes lives". The quote came as part of a section in the speech where Busch quoted a succession of Sweden feminists portraying men as violent or dangerous. "Men are animals...no sorry, worse than animals," ran another of the quotes.
In an article in the Aftonbladet newspaper on Thursday, however, Pahnke complained that she could neither remember writing the quote, not find any evidence that she had done so, adding that she had contacted the Christian Democrats to ask them where they had found it.
This prompted a post on Facebook by Busch on Thursday evening apologising and admitting that the quote had in fact been fabricated by an AI tool.
"That I attributed to her something she did not say verbatim is extremely unfortunate and I would of course like to apologize to both her and everyone who listened," Busch wrote.
In the post, Busch said when her team had questioned the AI tool over where the quote had come from, it had claimed it appeared both in a "deleted tweet" by Pahnke and in an article the magazine Arbetet from 2017
"It was even said how the quote had been shared on X, as well as how many likes and retweets it resulted in. The AI tool thus appears to have made up what had been on X," she said.
"This is a completely new situation for us that we receive a direct source that turns out not to be true. We are taking this seriously and it means that we will work differently going forward."
The gaffe drew criticism from opposition political parties, who noted that this was the second AI controversy to hit the government in as many weeks. Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson at the start of this month drew criticism after he admitted to using AI tools to help him weigh up the pros and cons of various political positions.
Niels Paarup-Pedersen, education spokesperson for the opposition Centre Party, said it was "totally absurd" that both the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister were now using AI to provide the underlying facts for speeches and policy-making.
"Anyone who knows anything knows that these large language models hallucinate. It's no wonder that the government is struggling to deliver on AI and digitisation if they lack this most fundamental understanding," he said.
In her article, Pahnke noted that the quote, which she conceded was "by no means a stupid quote", was similar, but not identical, to a text by her Aftonbladet colleague Tone Schunnesson, who five years ago wrote a text headlined: "Misogyny is not abstraction - it kills women".
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