Various indicators of AI-generated links and citations have been highlighted as a result of the discovery, and while PwC has responded, there is no direct indication how this happened or if action has been taken.<\/p>\n
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Vibe citations<\/p>\n GPTZero may be better known as a software tool for discovering plagiarism and AI-generated content, but it also boasts an investigation team.<\/p>\n The work of Paul Esau, Om Ogale, and Alex Cui has highlighted several problems with the publications issued by PwC, uncovering<\/a> \u201ca pattern of irresponsible AI usage resulting in hallucinated (vibe) citations, fabricated claims, and incomprehensible drafting and formatting decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n You may like<\/p>\n Vibe citations are hallucinated references to works that an AI-generated document cites as genuine. In some cases, specific pages may be cited, but usually the vibe citations refer to titles and authors.<\/p>\n They can be demonstrated as fake due to issues such as non-existence, incorrect authors, incorrect publication dates, erroneous URLs\u2026 or the citation may simply not exist, as in one case highlighted in the GPTZero report.<\/p>\n Not all inconsistencies are determined to be hallucinations, however, as not all meet the GPTZero team\u2019s standard for identifying vibe coding. So, while some other references with issues may be genuine and simply poorly cited, others may still be fake, but impossible to define.<\/p>\n PwC\u2019s account<\/p>\n The reports that PwC (and its competitors) are publishing are an attempt to position themselves as authorities on AI, and its responsible use. They seek to encourage organizations to avoid issues such as fabricated claims and vibe citations, but rather than provide advice, it has been a live demonstration in what not to do.<\/p>\n PwC responded to the GPTZero report by telling the Financial Times<\/a>: \u201cConsistent with our approach to responsible AI, we\u202fhave\u202fquality control processes for research and content development we expect all our people to\u202fadhere\u202fto.\u201d<\/p>\n Unfortunately, it seems that a better process of quality control and fact checking ahead of publishing was required for these reports, and perhaps others so far undetected.<\/p>\n Perhaps most concerning is the realization that PwC is not alone in this. In the past 12 months, GPTZero has documented similar issues with all the \u201cbig four\u201d accountancy firms, with PwC joining Deloitte, EY, KPMG in this \u201cvibes gallery\u201d of fabricated and unchecked citations.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \n <\/a><\/p>\n Follow TechRadar on Google News<\/a> and add us as a preferred source<\/a> to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) is believed to have published several AI-generated reports between 2024 and 2026The reports included various AI…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":732888,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-732887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=732887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732887\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/732888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=732887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=732887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=732887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Google](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/diM9tpwF2Lz85R8q85CT78.jpg\")
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