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Incident 1193: Purportedly Taxpayer-Funded Deloitte Report for Australian Government Contains Alleged AI-Generated Citations and Fabricated Legal Quote

Responded
Description: Australian academics reportedly identified fabricated references and a misattributed legal quote in a $439,000 Deloitte report for the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations on welfare compliance. Deleted citations allegedly referred to non-existent works, and a Federal Court judgment was misstated. Deloitte later acknowledged limited use of generative AI in preparing the report and issued a corrected version with a partial refund.

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Entities

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Alleged: Unknown large language model developer developed an AI system deployed by Deloitte, which harmed Deloitte , Scholars erroneously cited , Lisa Burton Crawford , Janina Boughey , Government of Australia , General public of Australia , Epistemic integrity , Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (DEWR) , Carolyn Adams and Academics.
Alleged implicated AI system: Unknown large language model

Incident Stats

Incident ID
1193
Report Count
3
Incident Date
2025-08-22
Editors
Daniel Atherton

Incident Reports

Reports Timeline

Incident Occurrence+1
Deloitte report suspected of containing AI invented quote
Deloitte to refund government, admits using AI in $440k report - Response
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Deloitte report suspected of containing AI invented quote

Deloitte report suspected of containing AI invented quote

afr.com

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Deloitte Australia writes government report with AI — and fake references

Deloitte Australia writes government report with AI — and fake references

pivot-to-ai.com

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Deloitte to refund government, admits using AI in $440k report

Deloitte to refund government, admits using AI in $440k report

afr.com

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Deloitte report suspected of containing AI invented quote
afr.com · 2025

New errors have been found in a major report Deloitte prepared for the federal government, raising further suspicions some of the content was generated by artificial intelligence.

On Friday The Australian Financial Review revealed that Delo…

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Deloitte Australia writes government report with AI — and fake references
pivot-to-ai.com · 2025

Deloitte Australia wrote a major report for the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (DEWR) about the legal basis for AI-based automated welfare system penalties. DEWR paid Deloitte AUD$439,000. [report, PDF; tender]

But Deloitt…

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Deloitte to refund government, admits using AI in $440k report
afr.com · 2025
Edmund Tadros, Paul Karp post-incident response

Deloitte Australia will issue a partial refund to the federal government after admitting that artificial intelligence had been used in the creation of a $440,000 report littered with errors including three nonexistent academic references an…

Variants

A "variant" is an AI incident similar to a known case—it has the same causes, harms, and AI system. Instead of listing it separately, we group it under the first reported incident. Unlike other incidents, variants do not need to have been reported outside the AIID. Learn more from the research paper.
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