My AI writing assistant started making up fake citations in my research paper Tuesday night

I was using an AI tool to help me find sources for a paper about machine learning bias, and it gave me 3 references that looked totally legit. Turned out every single one was completely made up, including a journal that doesn't even exist. Has anyone else had AI tools hallucinate fake sources, and what do you even do about it?

2 comments

2 Comments

king.kevin1mo ago

Three fake citations is rough, I feel your pain on that one.

the_ruby1mo ago

Yep, that's the classic AI hallucination problem. They're basically fancy auto-complete programs trained to sound confident, not accurate. You gotta treat everything they spit out like a lead you verify yourself, not a finished product. Double checking sources is just part of the workflow now, nobody else is going to do it for you.