Deloitte sent a report littered with ChatGPT hallucinations to the Australian Government.

[speak easy]

Now they're doing refunds

Deloitte will refund Australian government for AI hallucination-filled report

Consulting firm quietly admitted to GPT-4o use after fake citations were found in August.

The Australian Financial Review reports that Deloitte Australia will offer the Australian government a partial refund for a report that was littered with AI-hallucinated quotes and references to nonexistent research.

Shortly after the report was published, though, Sydney University Deputy Director of Health Law Chris Rudge noticed citations to multiple papers and publications that did not exist. That included multiple references to nonexistent reports by Lisa Burton Crawford, a real professor at the University of Sydney law school.

"It is concerning to see research attributed to me in this way," Crawford told the AFR in August. "I would like to see an explanation from Deloitte as to how the citations were generated."

Deloitte Australia said it will repay the final installment of its contract with the government, though it's unclear which portion of the total contract that represents. A spokesperson for DEWR told the AFR that "the substance of the independent review is retained, and there are no changes to the recommendations."

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/10/deloitte-will-refund-australian-government-for-ai-hallucination-filled-report/

[NJCher]

1. How embarrassing

Eom

[GreatGazoo]

2. Our local tourism board posted about "cobblestone streets"

in small local town that has none. Obvious AI nonsense but they either didn't bother to read it or just assumed 'it's a computer so it must be right.'

Surprisingly common despite trillions in investment.

[haele]

3. Deliotte has been a respected strategic analysis organization...

After all the issues that are publicly known about AI, they should know better by now than to incorporate LLMs into their reports without tight constraints and checking for hallucinations.

[highplainsdem]

4. That should be a full refund, not a partial one.