Deloitte's $290,000 Report Full of Ghost Academics
The Prompt
Research and cite relevant academic sources for Australian government welfare policy report
The Response
According to Crawford (2022) in 'Administrative Compliance and Digital Governance in the Australian Context,' the framework for digital identity verification has been extensively studied at the University of Sydney...
Reality Check
The book doesn't exist. Professor Lisa Burton Crawford of the University of Sydney is a real person, but the AI invented a book for her in a field outside her expertise. A law professor named Chris Rudge found roughly 20 fabricated sources in the report, including a made-up quote from a federal court judge and fake studies supposedly from the University of Sydney and Lund University. None of them were real. Deloitte had to issue a partial refund.
A $290,000 consulting report submitted to the Australian government turned out to be riddled with AI-generated fake citations. One professor discovered the AI had attributed a nonexistent book to her and called it “either hallucinated by AI or the world’s best kept secret.” Deloitte later disclosed the report was created using Azure OpenAI and issued a refund. Then it happened again in Canada with a $1.6 million Deloitte health care report. Reported by Fortune and Above the Law.