The Polish Government has suffered two embarrassments with regard to its efforts at promoting the country when it emerged that the official responsible has published a report on the matter generated by AI and strewn with errors and that an OnlyFans model has been acting as ambassador for publicising the Warsaw Uprising.
It was on July 29 that Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who leads Poland’s centre-left government, held a press conference with his newly appointed minister for promoting Poland abroad, introducing her as “Poland’s most outstanding specialist in brand-building”. Just three weeks later she resigned under pressure after she was pilloried for having published a report which critics said had been written largely by AI.
On August 20 it emerged that the official in question, Barbara Mróz-Gorgoń, a professor at the Wrocław University of Economics and Business appointed to be the government’s promotion of Poland as a brand tsar, was the author of a report containing a whole slew of errors showing signs of having been generated by artificial intelligence. That led to a storm in the Polish media and opposition calls for her to be prosecuted for the misuse of public funds and dismissed from her post.
The controversy around Mróz-Gorgoń and the report emerged just days after the sport and tourism ministry was involved in the launch of an advertising campaign featuring, among others, Polish football star Robert Lewandowski and Hollywood star Jesse Eisenberg who recently starred in a film set in modern day Poland. The campaign, launched on August 18 under the slogan “POLAND. More than you expected”, carries a budget of 7 million złoty (€1.6 million) and also features Lech Wałęsa, Maryla Rodowicz and the model Anja Rubik.
The document was titled “Poles’ self portrait” and was published in November 2025 with Mróz-Gorgoń named as the author. She was at the time the president of a think tank called Marka Polska (Brand Poland).
The 26-page report was produced under a public task titled “Brand Poland: tourism sub-strategy”, for which the sport and tourism ministry awarded 200,000 złoty (€46,000) to the Association of Conferences and Congresses in Poland.
The report contained glaring errors, such as describing the city of Katowice as being in “north central” Poland (whereas in fact it is in the south) and Wrocław as being in the “northwest” (when it is actually in the southwest). It also credited Poland with five Nobel laureates.
The text also features odd use of language, including random use of words in English, some of which have been turned into Polish ones. It also regularly features words written in capital letters.
Some of the statements it makes are bizarre, such as noting that after the Second World War Germany chose not to build its brand on the Holocaust.
Even stranger was the claim that 95 per cent of young Poles speak fluent English and in addition many speak Mandarin Chinese. These assertions are not backed by any evidence.
The report also contains numerical errors in footnotes, which are numbered randomly (the sequence jumps from three to 41 and then to 517) and some of which are completely empty.
The document was first flagged on the X platform by Sebastian Meitz of the Sobieski Institute, a right-wing think tank, with the information security researcher Łukasz Olejnik making similar claims the same day. Content detectors cited by the news portal Wirtualna Polska attributed between 81 and 91 per cent of the text to artificial intelligence.
After a media storm broke out about the report the ministry of sport and tourism on August 20 issued a statement saying that the report was not ordered by them, was not part of any agreement to which the ministry was a party, and that no request to use the ministry’s logo was submitted.
The denial came in reaction to the fact that the front cover featured the logo of the ministry and that the first page of it stated that the project was carried out under an initiative co-funded by the ministry.
The trouble is that it soon emerged that the deputy sport and tourism minister Piotr Borys, in a social media post published in November 2025, had praised the presentation of the report at the Kozminski University in Warsaw, When asked about this on August 21 he said that he had not read the report and called the affair “political chutzpah by PiS”, adding that “not a single złoty” of public money had gone on it.
Mróz-Gorgoń herself reacted to the controversy around the report on August 20 with an interview for commercial broadcaster Polsat News in which she said that the report was actually a “work in progress” that “should never have appeared in the public domain”.
Though she still defended the work carried out as part of the project, writing on X that “full responsibility for the expertise, editing and substantive verification rests with the authors”.
Pressed by the broadcaster Mróz-Gorgoń admitted that the writing of the report had been “aided by artificial intelligence” and later told the Polish Press Agency (PAP) that “we used AI tools solely for transcription, summarising and text editing; they did not design research content or draw conclusions”.
She also insisted that the project was conducted according to accepted social science methodology and had been conducted diligently.
Mróz-Gorgoń did not though explain why no one had edited the document for errors and why strange and unsubstantiated statements had been made in it.
The Marka Polska think tank which published the report swiftly added “draft version” to the report before later deleting the content in its entirety. The news portal Zero has since republished the full document.
The largest opposition party, Law and Justice (PiS), promptly revealed that it has submitted requests for both prosecutors and the anti-corruption watchdog (CBA) to investigate the use of the 200,000 złoty (€46,000) for the project that the report was part of, and called on Mróz-Gorgoń to be dismissed. The Warsaw regional prosecutor’s office has asked the sport and tourism ministry for copies of the report and of the funding agreement.
But it was not PiS outrage which led to Mróz-Gorgoń’s resignation, rather the lack of support for her from prominent politicians such as Grzegorz Schetyna, a Civic Coalition senator and former leader of Civic Platform (PO), Tusk’s party, who told Radio ZET that the use of AI in the document was “compromising for the authors” and that she should go.
On August 21 she issued a statement saying that “with this unimaginable scale of hate it is impossible to perform such a responsible role”.
But there has been another recent embarrassing development with regard to promoting Polish history consisting of the fact that an OnlyFans model has been acting as an “ambassador” for publicising the history of the Warsaw Uprising.
The Warsaw Uprising began on August 1, 1944 and lasted 63 days and was triggered by the Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa, AK) which attempted to seize control of the Polish capital from the Germans as the Red Army, which had in late July of the same year installed a puppet government the AK opposed, approached the city.
The Germans held their ground and overcame the Uprising causing the general destruction of the city and committing mass killings of civilians in the process. Estimates of civilian deaths range from 150,000 to 200,000.
The Warsaw Uprising Museum has become an important place to visit for tourists interested in history and Poland in general.
Monika Laskowska who is known for her activities on the OnlyFans platform was awarded the title of “Ambassador of Remembrance” by the Warszawa44 Association as part of a campaign marking the 82nd anniversary of the uprising and held under the honorary patronage of both the culture ministry and the sport and tourism ministry.
🔴 Monika Laskowska, znana na niebieskiej platformie jako MonaLisa, otrzymała tytuł “Ambasadorki pamięci Powstania Warszawskiego” pod patronatem honorowym Ministerstwa Kultury i Dziedzictwa Narodowego, na czele którego stoi minister Marta Cienkowska. pic.twitter.com/wsEpBdNnTb
— WolnośćTV (@WolnoscTV) August 19, 2026
In posts Laskowska is pictured wearing a T-shirt dedicated to the Warsaw Uprising as part of a campaign which has also involved several well known Polish public figures including athletes. Other ambassadors included the former footballer Jacek Bąk and the former boxer Dariusz Michalczewski.
Laskowska has become notorious in particular, by conducting interviews with celebrities who participate in “freak fights” as well as running and owning an account on the OnlyFans platform.
The head of the Warszawa44 association Dariusz Michałak defended its decision on Laskowska saying it was based on her outreach.
“We took into account her presence in the public sphere, her reach on social media, and her stated willingness to promote the memory of the Warsaw Uprising,” said Michałak.
He also announced that “in the light of the controversies currently arising regarding Ms Monika Laskowska’s activities,” Warszawa44 has decided to “suspend activities related to her duties as an ambassador.”
On August 21 the culture minister Marta Cienkowska cancelled the ministry’s honorary patronage of the campaign, saying the association’s choice of ambassadors “grossly violates the seriousness and generally accepted standards of commemorating the heroes of the Warsaw Uprising”. The sport and tourism ministry took the same decision. Criticism had also focused on a second ambassador, the kickboxer Marcin Różalski, who has spoken favourably of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Poland has been recording consistent growth in the tourism sector thanks to a much improved transport and hospitality infrastructure as well as the country increasingly playing the host for sporting, cultural and business events. Though the market is highly competitive as all countries seek their unique selling propositions to offer prospective tourists.
In 2025 Poland recorded the EU’s second fastest growth in tourism, behind only Malta, with nights spent in tourist accommodation up 7.2 per cent against 10.1 per cent for Malta, according to Eurostat. In terms of nights spent in tourist accommodation it remains well behind not only leaders such as Spain, Italy and France, but also smaller nations such as Greece, the Netherlands and Austria.
Tourism accounts for 4.8 per cent of Poland’s GDP, or 173.2 billion złoty in 2024, according to the OECD. Borys has said the government wants the sector to account for 9 per cent of GDP within 10 years.
The debate over promoting tourism has been about how much Poland should accentuate its history, diversity of its natural environment and the relative safety of its cities. There have also been calls on the government to do more to promote domestic tourism and revive a scheme that had been implemented by the previous government of issuing tourism vouchers, known as the bon turystyczny, to Polish families that can only be spent in recognised tourist locations.
While attracting positive reviews with regard to its hospitality sector, modernity of its infrastructure as well as the cleanliness and public safety there have been negatives communicated about the judicial system and fears of military conflict with Russia.
