AIster · The agentic age · Culture
Deloitte refunds part of its fee over AI errors in a report
A big consultancy delivered a paid government report with fabricated citations
Key facts
- Date
- 6 Oct 2025
- Era
- The agentic age
- Interest
- Culture
- Threads
- Safety & governance
- Contract
- A$440,000, Department of Employment and Workplace Relations
- Found by
- Christopher Rudge, University of Sydney
- Errors
- Non-existent academic references and a false quote attributed to a judge in the robodebt case Amato v Commonwealth
- Refund
- Final instalment of the contract, just over A$97,000
Deloitte Australia wrote an A$440,000 report on a welfare compliance system for the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations. University of Sydney academic Christopher Rudge found fabricated references in it and a made-up quote from a federal court judgment. A revised version was then published disclosing that Deloitte had used an Azure OpenAI GPT-4o tool chain, and Deloitte agreed to repay the final instalment of the contract.
Sources
- Associated Press, Deloitte to partially refund Australian government for report with apparent AI-generated errors, 2025-10-07
- The Register, Deloitte refunds Aussie gov after AI fabrications slip into $440K welfare report, 2025-10-06
- CFO Dive, Deloitte refunds over $60K for report with AI errors, Australian government says, 2025-10-21