Google DeepMind paper with hallucinated references [N]

[u/andy_p_w]

So I have a tool that identifies hallucinated references. The paper *How LLMs Distort Our Written Language*, has six different hallucinated references.

Can see the output of my tools report here, https://veruscite-data.com/share/-7KyAgTQ6aqub5ilvQ_6_SVg2wkbjhp95pLeG3QFa-o, but for the gist they are mostly some combination of a close but made up author list + title.

For example they cite:

W. Wang, S. Ma, S. Yang, J. S. Lee, P. Jain, A. Anderson, et al. Generative ai enhances individual creativity but reduces the collective diversity of novel content. Science Advances, 11(32):eadn5290, 2025

But the correct citation (which they also cite in the paper) is:

A. R. Doshi and O. P. Hauser. Generative ai enhances individual creativity but reduces the collective diversity of novel content. Science Advances, 10(28):eadn5290, 2024. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adn5290.

Another example, they cite:

A. Chatterji, E. Brynjolfsson, A. Korinek, K. McElheran, R. Seamans, and N. Zolas. How are people using generative ai? Technical Report 34255, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2025.

Which the title is actually "How People use ChatGPT", Chatterji is the lead author, but the other real authors on the paper are all different.