A major accounting firm published a report about the benefits of artificial intelligence, and it turned out the report itself was riddled with AI-generated errors. The firm was KPMG, one of the world's Big Four professional services companies, alongside Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Ernst & Young.
According to a report by Engadget, KPMG published a document in October 2025 titled Total Experience: Redefining Excellence in the Age of Agentic AI. The report was intended to show how companies are using AI to serve customer needs. Instead, investigators found it was packed with fabricated citations and false claims.
GPTZero, the maker of an AI content detection tool, examined the report and found that only five citations out of 45 accurately pointed to real sources. A total of 28 citations paraphrased titles or added fake components to real sources, while 12 were too vague to determine whether they existed at all. The Financial Times verified the findings. GPTZero gave a name to the pattern of AI-generated fake references, calling it "vibe citing."
The problems went beyond citations. Investigators found that roughly half of the claims in the paper were fake or misattributed. GPTZero said they were "likely the result of an AI research tool over-complying with a request to find examples of 'agentic AI' in the wild."
Specific examples stood out. KPMG claimed that Emirates had launched a mobile chatbot called Sara that could talk to passengers and change their flight bookings. Sara was actually a mobile assistant launched in 2023, not an AI-powered chatbot, and it did not have the ability to alter bookings. KPMG also claimed that the Swiss investment bank UBS had integrated agentic AI across its "investment advisory, risk management and compliance monitoring." UBS told the Financial Times that the information was "factually incorrect." A third example involved Swiss Federal Railways, which KPMG said had deployed AI agents to help passengers plan, book and optimize trips based on preferences, real-time data and carbon impact. A spokesperson for the railway said that was "not accurate."
The stakes of the error go beyond one bad report. Papers published by Big Four firms are routinely cited in other research and journalism because they carry a high level of trust. GPTZero chief executive Edward Tian warned that flawed papers from firms like KPMG could "poison the well of information" and set off second-hand AI hallucinations, where bad information spreads from one source to the next.
A KPMG spokesperson told the Times that the company "takes the accuracy and integrity of its published content seriously." The firm has since pulled the report and says it is "reviewing the circumstances surrounding its publication."
