{"id":134842,"date":"2025-10-08T14:36:57","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T22:36:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2025\/10\/08\/law-professor-catches-deloitte-using-made-up-ai-hallucinations-in-government-report\/"},"modified":"2025-10-08T14:36:57","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T22:36:57","slug":"law-professor-catches-deloitte-using-made-up-ai-hallucinations-in-government-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2025\/10\/08\/law-professor-catches-deloitte-using-made-up-ai-hallucinations-in-government-report\/","title":{"rendered":"Law Professor Catches Deloitte Using Made-Up AI Hallucinations In Government Report"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Australian government\u00a0paid consultants Deloitte 440,000 Australian dollars ($290,000) for a report on the use of automated penalties in Australia\u2019s welfare system. The final version of the report was placed on the Department of Employment and Workplace Relation, but that\u2019s far from the end of the story.<\/p>\n

Law professor Chris Rudge<\/a> at Sydney Law School read the published report and immediately knew there was a problem \u2014 he says the report was \u201cfull of fabricated references,\u201d and he catalogued some 20 errors. The most obvious was a citation to a colleague, Lisa Burton Crawford, that seemed suspicious. Rudge said<\/a>, \u201cI instantaneously knew it was either hallucinated by AI or the world\u2019s best kept secret because I\u2019d never heard of the book and it sounded preposterous.\u201d<\/p>\n

But there were other issues \u2014 including made up caselaw.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve totally misquoted a court case then made up a quotation from a judge and I thought, well hang on: that\u2019s actually a bit bigger than academics\u2019 egos. That\u2019s about misstating the law to the Australian government in a report that they rely on. So I thought it was important to stand up for diligence,\u201d Rudge said.<\/p>\n

Deloitte re-issued the report, saying the recommendations and \u201csubstance\u201d of the report remain unchanged but they \u201cconfirmed some footnotes and references were incorrect.\u201d And the new version of the report added a noteworthy disclosure \u2014 that Azure OpenAI was used.<\/p>\n

And they\u2019re going to refund some of the money the Australian government paid, saying the \u201cmatter has been resolved directly with the client.\u201d But that\u2019s not enough for some. Australian Senator Barbara Pocock wants a full refund, noting Deloitte \u201cmisused AI and used it very inappropriately: misquoted a judge, used references that are non-existent.\u201d Pocock continued, \u201cI mean, the kinds of things that a first-year university student would be in deep trouble for.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast<\/a>, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her<\/a> with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1<\/a>\u00a0or Mastodon @Kathryn1@mastodon.social.<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The post Law Professor Catches Deloitte Using Made-Up AI Hallucinations In Government Report<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Australian government\u00a0paid consultants Deloitte 440,000 Australian dollars ($290,000) for a report on the use of automated penalties in Australia\u2019s welfare system. The final version of the report was placed on the Department of Employment and Workplace Relation, but that\u2019s far from the end of the story.<\/p>\n

Law professor Chris Rudge<\/a> at Sydney Law School read the published report and immediately knew there was a problem \u2014 he says the report was \u201cfull of fabricated references,\u201d and he catalogued some 20 errors. The most obvious was a citation to a colleague, Lisa Burton Crawford, that seemed suspicious. Rudge said<\/a>, \u201cI instantaneously knew it was either hallucinated by AI or the world\u2019s best kept secret because I\u2019d never heard of the book and it sounded preposterous.\u201d<\/p>\n

But there were other issues \u2014 including made up caselaw.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve totally misquoted a court case then made up a quotation from a judge and I thought, well hang on: that\u2019s actually a bit bigger than academics\u2019 egos. That\u2019s about misstating the law to the Australian government in a report that they rely on. So I thought it was important to stand up for diligence,\u201d Rudge said.<\/p>\n

Deloitte re-issued the report, saying the recommendations and \u201csubstance\u201d of the report remain unchanged but they \u201cconfirmed some footnotes and references were incorrect.\u201d And the new version of the report added a noteworthy disclosure \u2014 that Azure OpenAI was used.<\/p>\n

And they\u2019re going to refund some of the money the Australian government paid, saying the \u201cmatter has been resolved directly with the client.\u201d But that\u2019s not enough for some. Australian Senator Barbara Pocock wants a full refund, noting Deloitte \u201cmisused AI and used it very inappropriately: misquoted a judge, used references that are non-existent.\u201d Pocock continued, \u201cI mean, the kinds of things that a first-year university student would be in deep trouble for.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast<\/a>, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her<\/a> with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1<\/a>\u00a0or Mastodon @Kathryn1@mastodon.social.<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The post Law Professor Catches Deloitte Using Made-Up AI Hallucinations In Government Report<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Australian government\u00a0paid consultants Deloitte 440,000 Australian dollars ($290,000) for a report on the use of automated penalties in Australia\u2019s welfare system. The final version of the report was placed on the Department of Employment and Workplace Relation, but that\u2019s far from the end of the story. Law professor Chris Rudge at Sydney Law School […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":134843,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-134842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xira.com\/p\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/IMG_5243-1-scaled-e1623338814705-620x568-jQhs5Q.jpg?fit=620%2C568&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134842\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}