53 NeurIPS 2025 papers contained AI-generated 'hallucinations': Report
A new report found that just over 1% of accepted papers at the big NeurIPS 2025 AI conference had fake, AI-generated citations—sometimes called "hallucinations."
Out of over 4,800 papers checked, more than 50 included these made-up references.
What's a 'vibe citation?'
These "vibe citations" are basically sources that don't exist or can't be traced.
Tools and humans worked together to spot them—identifying made-up or untraceable sources, and flagging some papers as likely AI-generated or AI-mixed.
More submissions, more mistakes
With NeurIPS submissions jumping from about 9,500 in 2020 to over 21,000 in 2025, errors per paper have also shot up.
The average mistakes per paper rose by over half in recent years.
Reviewers missing the mark
Even though reviewers are supposed to catch these hallucinations, plenty still slip through.
Some papers with fake citations were even presented at the conference—showing how tough it's getting for peer review teams to keep up with all the new (and sometimes sneaky) AI content.