![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Ruth-Dimes.jpg\")
The University of Auckland Business School\u2019s Ruth Dimes, who asked the students to produce the reports using AI. Photo: Supplied<\/p>\nWhen ChatGPT first hit universities, two academics at the University of Auckland\u2019s Business School decided they might as well incorporate it into coursework. Why not get students to experiment with generating a corporate report?<\/p>\n
Ruth Dimes, who led the business master\u2019s programme at the time, and Charl de Villiers, a professor of accounting, instructed postgraduate students to produce a typical corporate sustainability report using generative AI. Then, they mixed up the AI reports with real ones and had students blindly assess them.<\/p>\n
Dimes and de Villiers found that ChatGPT glossed over sustainability issues and produced language ranked high in metrics for greenwashing. Moreover, students preferred the fake reports over real ones. \u201cThey were very persuaded by the language in in ChatGPT,\u201d says Dimes.<\/p>\n
These students weren\u2019t rookies, either. \u201cThis was a really informed group of students,\u201d says Dimes. \u201cThey were studying accounting, they were studying sustainability reporting, they\u2019d been through all of the things around what companies try to do and what greenwashing is.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, they preferred reports that made a company\u2019s social and environmental disclosures sound great, even if the company\u2019s performance on those fronts was average.<\/p>\n
Where greenwashing seeps in<\/p>\n
Most companies include information about their own environmental and social impact in their reporting \u2013 as well as how environmental and societal factors might affect them. \u201cSo, how the changes in the natural environment might influence the company\u2019s ability to make money in the future,\u201d says de Villiers. \u201cAnd then the influence of the company on the fabric of society and on the natural environment.\u201d<\/p>\n
In some jurisdictions, it\u2019s compulsory to make these disclosures \u2013 the European Union, for instance, requires both these perspectives to be included in corporate reporting.<\/p>\n
The University of Auckland Business School\u2019s Ruth Dimes, who asked the students to produce the reports using AI. Photo: Supplied<\/p>\n
Disclosing this information can lead to greater trust from investors, making it easier for a company to raise money, but research finds that companies don\u2019t always tell the full story about their environmental impacts. \u201cThe critics of these companies say, \u2018You\u2019re greenwashing \u2013 you\u2019re emphasising the best points and you\u2019re ignoring the bad points,\u2019\u201d says de Villiers.<\/p>\n
Sustainability is increasingly important in investors\u2019 decision-making, write Dimes and de Villiers in their research. Environmentally focused investments are big money \u2013 Bloomberg estimated they will exceed $40 trillion by 2030. Deception introduced by greenwashing is concerning from both an economic and environmental perspective.<\/p>\n
How the researchers tested greenwashing<\/p>\n
Dimes designed an assignment where students used ChatGPT to create a CEO statement to shareholders \u2013 a summary that would normally sit alongside a sustainability report \u2013 for a fictional company.<\/p>\n
Dimes and de Villiers decided to use a hypothetical Hawkes Bay forestry company as the setting. Forestry was interesting, says de Villiers, because of its connection to climate change, and because it has upsides and downsides on environmental and social impacts.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe prompted the students to write this report using AI and then to re-prompt and re-prompt to improve it \u2013 and to show us what they did,\u201d says de Villiers. \u201cBut they took the first output they got. They didn\u2019t do much more \u2026 maybe they read it and they went, \u2018Well, this is much better than I would have done\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dimes took the reports, randomised them, added three real corporate reports, and gave them to other students to rate on which they found most believable.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we asked students to rank them in terms of a bunch of different things like \u2018credibility\u2019 and \u2018would you invest in this firm\u2019, et cetera, they liked the ones that ChatGPT came up with better,\u201d says de Villiers.<\/p>\n
Of course, the students didn\u2019t carry any real-world responsibility for the results of their choices, says Dimes \u2013 a factor which can affect a study\u2019s results. \u201cIf students make a decision like, \u2018I trust this company\u2019 or \u2018I don\u2019t trust this company\u2019, there\u2019s no consequences to what they were doing, whereas someone in a real job who\u2019s investing, it\u2019s different.\u201d<\/p>\n
But these students are about to enter the workforce, likely going into roles where they will do just that, says Dimes. \u201cI mean, that\u2019s exactly the job. So, there\u2019s not that much difference between a master\u2019s student specialising in sustainability reporting and a sustainability analyst who would have that background.\u201d<\/p>\n
Why greenwashing rises to the top<\/p>\n
Next, Dimes and de Villiers put the ChatGPT reports through a greenwashing detection tool. \u201cAnd yes, they were quite greenwashy,\u201d says de Villiers.<\/p>\n
In other words, they were too good to be true, especially compared to the real reports. \u201cThe real ones had real issues that they were not able to gloss over \u2013 they had to admit to certain issues, whereas the made-up ones didn\u2019t have that problem.\u201d<\/p>\n
Notably, Dimes and de Villiers found that reports that had been edited by students weren\u2019t any better than the ones straight out of ChatGPT. More prompts or more tinkering with the output text didn\u2019t change the level of greenwashing.<\/p>\n
This suggests it\u2019s hard to mitigate the impact of AI use with human intervention. AI\u2019s overly confident tone, people\u2019s inability to detect AI use, and people\u2019s willingness to believe it are \u201cworrying factors\u201d, according to Dimes and de Villiers.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard to regulate tone \u2013 to formulate standards around persuasiveness or confidence \u2013 but firmer regulations are exactly what\u2019s needed in sustainability reporting, says Dimes.<\/p>\n
\u201cAuditing and assurance of it is still quite kind of nascent compared to financial reporting, which is subject to a lot of regulation,\u201d she says. \u201cThere needs to be some kind of control or regulation or guidance because there\u2019s still a lot of choice about what you say or what you choose to omit from a sustainability report \u2013 and a lot of language choice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another solution? \u201cCompanies might find their investors want hard evidence to back up the sustainability stories they tell in their reports,\u201d says de Villiers. Otherwise, the very real risk is shareholders and future investors viewing sustainability reporting as mere AI fabrication.<\/p>\n
The world is facing unprecedented environmental challenges. Planetary Solutions, an initiative of the Sustainability Hub at Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland, and Newsroom, explores these issues \u2013 and the practical ways we can all be part of the solution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When ChatGPT first hit universities, two academics at the University of Auckland\u2019s Business School decided they might as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":477918,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[273,111,43,139,69,84870,147,145,22190],"class_list":["post-477917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-planetary-solutions","tag-science","tag-technology","tag-university-of-auckland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=477917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/477918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}