Member M. told us today how he uses AI to check his formatting. In one instance, he asked it to format a reference into MLA style for a paper he is submitting to a journal. The AI returned a different citation for the same author on the same subject, but more recent. Looking into it however, he discovered that the AI had invented the article. Though the journal and author were real, the article itself was not. This is not a new problem. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, infamously included fake citations in a major report on children’s chronic health issues. Similarly, the journals and scientists were real, but the articles themselves were not. Investigators from major news publications including the New York Times concluded they may have been invented by AI. To read more, see:

https://www.science.org/content/article/trump-officials-downplay-fake-citations-high-profile-report-children-s-health