Deloitte has agreed to refund part of an Australian government contract after admitting it used generative AI to produce a report riddled with fake citations, phantom footnotes, and even a made-up quote from a Federal Court judgment. The consulting giant confirmed it would repay the final installment of its AU$440,000 ($291,245) agreement with Australia's Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (DEWR) after the department re-uploaded a corrected version of the report late last week - conveniently timed for the weekend. The updated version strips out more than a dozen bogus references and footnotes, rewrites text, and fixes assorted typos, although officials insist the "substance" of the report remains intact. The work, commissioned last December, involved the Targeted Compliance Framework - the government's IT-driven system for penalizing welfare recipients who miss obligations such as job search appointments.
