News imageMore or Less, Did AI researchers let AI hallucinations into scientific papers?

More or Less

Did AI researchers let AI hallucinations into scientific papers?

21 February 2026

9 minutes

Available for over a year

AI can make mistakes – and AI chatbots like ChatGPT warn you about that whenever you ask them anything.

These mistakes sometimes involve making up entirely fictitious, factually false statements known as “hallucinations”.

Whether these hallucinations matter depends on what you’re using AI for, and whether they are spotted and corrected.

The team on More or Less were slightly surprised to read a headline in Fortune magazine, claiming that a top academic AI conference accepted research papers which contained 100 AI-hallucinated citations.

You might think that the top AI researchers in the world would be careful about using AI to write their research papers.

Alex Tui, CTO and co-founder of GPTZero – whose company discovered the hallucinations – explains what’s going on.

CREDITS:

Presenter and producer: Tom Colls

Sound mix: James Beard

Production co-ordinator: Brenda Brown

Editor: Richard Vadon