Deloitte will provide a partial refund after delivering a government report filled with fabricated references and legal citations that appear to have been generated by artificial intelligence.
The Big Four firm agreed to forgo payment for the concluding portion of its 440,000 Australian dollar ($290,000) contract with the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations following the discovery of significant errors in a welfare compliance review released in July, the department confirmed Monday.
The document, which examined issues within Australia’s automated welfare penalty system for jobseekers, included citations to academic papers that don’t exist, a made-up judicial quote attributed to a judge whose name was also spelled incorrectly, and flawed references to court decisions.
Dr. Christopher Rudge, a University of Sydney researcher in health and welfare law, spotted the problems and found a dozen citations pointing to a fictitious report supposedly authored by a Sydney law professor, plus two more referencing an imaginary paper by a Swedish scholar.
“That’s about misstating the law to the Australian government in a report that they rely on,” Rudge told reporters. “So I thought it was important to stand up for diligence.”
An updated version went online Friday on the department’s website, eliminating the fraudulent citations. The new document notes that Azure OpenAI, a generative AI platform, assisted in producing parts of the analysis.
According to the department, the core findings and recommendations have not changed. Deloitte told The Associated Press the “matter has been resolved directly with the client” but did not respond when asked if AI generated the errors.
Senator Barbara Pocock, the Australian Greens’ public sector spokesperson, called for a full refund, saying the firm “misused AI and used it very inappropriately.”
In a notable coincidence, Deloitte announced Monday it would deploy AI chatbots to nearly 500,000 employees globally and develop AI compliance products for regulated industries.
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