"Yet Canadian startup GPTZero analyzed more than 4,000 research papers accepted and presented at NeurIPS (Neural Information Processing Systems) 2025 and says it uncovered hundreds of AI-hallucinated citations that slipped past the three or more reviewers assigned to each submission, spanning at least 53 papers in total. The hallucinations had not previously been reported."
"From fully made-up citations to subtle changes In some cases, an AI model blended or paraphrased elements from multiple real papers, including believable-sounding titles and author lists, the company says. Others appeared to be fully made up: a nonexistent author, a fabricated paper title, a fake journal or conference, or a URL that leads nowhere."
"In other cases, the model started from a real paper but made subtle changes-expanding an author's initials into a guessed first name, dropping or adding coauthors, or paraphrasing the title. Some, however, are plainly wrong-citing "John Smith" and "Jane Doe" as authors, for example."
"When reached for comment, the NeurIPS board shared the following statement: "The usage of LLMs in papers at AI conferences is rapidly evolving, and NeurIPS is actively monitoring developments. In previous years, we piloted policies regarding the use of LLMs, and in 2025, reviewers were instructed to flag hallucinations. Regarding the findings of this specific work, we emphasize that significantly more effort is required to determine the implications. Even if 1.1% of the papers have one or more incorrect references due t"
NeurIPS is a major AI research conference attracting tens of thousands of submissions and participants. GPTZero analyzed more than 4,000 papers accepted and presented at NeurIPS 2025 and uncovered hundreds of AI-hallucinated citations across at least 53 papers. The hallucinated references included fully fabricated papers, nonexistent authors, fake venues and dead URLs, as well as blended or subtly altered real citations. Many instances expanded initials, added or dropped coauthors, or paraphrased titles; some cited obvious placeholders. Each submission had three or more reviewers, and NeurIPS instructed reviewers in 2025 to flag hallucinations while noting further study is required.
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