“Deloitte Australia will partially refund the 440,000 Australian dollars ($290,000) paid by the Australian government for a report that was littered with apparent AI-generated errors, including a fabricated quote from a federal court judgment and references to nonexistent academic research papers. The financial services firm’s report to the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations was originally published on the department’s website in July.
A revised version was published Friday after Chris Rudge, a Sydney University researcher of health and welfare law, said he alerted the media that the report was “full of fabricated references.” Deloitte had reviewed the 237-page report and “confirmed some footnotes and references were incorrect,” the department said in a statement Tuesday. “Deloitte had agreed to repay the final instalment under its contract,” the department said. The amount will be made public after the refund is reimbursed.
Asked to comment on the report’s inaccuracies, Deloitte told The Associated Press in a statement the “matter has been resolved directly with the client.” Deloitte did not respond when asked if the errors were generated by AI. ”