SYDNEY, Oct 7 — Deloitte has agreed to partially refund the Australian government for an A$440,000 (RM1.2 million) report after revelations it used artificial intelligence to produce the document caused public controversy.
The Guardian reported that Deloitte has stated it would reimburse Australia’s Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (DEWR) the final installment under its contract.
Several errors were found in the report including a made-up reference to a court decision and non-existent reports attributed to professors from Sweden’s Lund University and the University of Sydney.
Despite the errors, Deloitte stands by the report.
While the firm confirmed that “some footnotes and references were incorrect…The substance of the independent review is retained, and there are no changes to the recommendations.”
The report was commissioned in December 2024 as a review of DEWR’s targeted compliance framework as well as its IT systems.
In an updated version of the report, Deloitte stated in the appendix that part of the report “included the use of a generative artificial intelligence (AI) large language model (Azure OpenAI GPT – 4o) based tool chain licensed by DEWR and hosted on DEWR’s Azure tenancy.”
However the firm stopped short of ascribing the errors in the report to AI.
