The symptom is specific: aI turns a paraphrase into a direct quote. Start with the affected item and identify the decision or input that could produce this behavior.
Find the likely cause
The draft blurs reported speech and verbatim wording.
Treat this as an explanation to verify against the actual work. Look at the input, the relevant decision, and the final result together. If the evidence does not support this diagnosis, investigate the mismatch before applying a convenient but unrelated fix.
Make the targeted correction
Use quotation marks only for verified exact language.
An interview article should preserve the source's meaning while giving readers a coherent argument and useful context.
Check that the repair worked
Match every quote to the recording or approved transcript.
Repeat the check on the final version that the reader or customer will encounter. An approved draft, a preview, and a published result can differ; the acceptance decision should concern the version people actually use.
Prevent the next related failure
A separate issue to watch for is this: the article makes the interviewee sound more certain than they were. Preserve uncertainty where it changes the meaning.
Monitor the useful outcome
Track factual corrections and whether the finished piece accurately represents the interviewee's intended meaning.
Keep a short record of the original symptom, the evidence behind the diagnosis, and the result of the acceptance check. That record makes the solution reusable when the same condition appears again, without assuming that every superficially similar problem has the same cause.