Ask your accountant one question: did AI write this?

Deloitte Australia wrote a 219-page feasibility study for the Western Australian government on merging three universities, for a fee of A$166,000, about US$117,000. In October, after a critic on a discussion forum flagged what looked like AI-generated citation errors and the Australian Financial Review followed up, the errors were itemised: citations naming the wrong authors, references that did not match the studies they pointed to, a link to an entirely different journal article, and a university repeatedly referred to by a name it dropped in 2010. Deloitte called them “minor referencing errors” and said they did not affect the substantive findings.

Then, on 26 October, Guardian Australia read the appendix. In one scenario the day-one merger costs and the five-year costs that followed added up to A$659 million, and the report recorded A$399 million, a gap of A$260 million. Deloitte said generative AI had been used to “support the collation of research, synthesis of information and editorial proofing.” The state government said it was “extremely disappointed,” asked for expedited cost recovery, and ordered the report reissued.

It is the second time in a year for an Australian government. In 2025 Deloitte produced a A$440,000 review for Australia’s employment department that cited academic papers which did not exist and quoted a federal judge in a passage she never wrote. The revised version disclosed that a generative AI system, Azure OpenAI, had been used in its creation, and Deloitte repaid the final instalment, reported at over A$97,000.