--- title: "Top Consulting Group PwC Caught Using AI on “Thought Leadership” Report About AI, Resulting in Corporate Document Filled With Bizarre Hallucinations" description: "PwC, one of the \"Big Four\" consulting firms, has been caught red-handed publishing \"thought leadership\" reports about AI riddled with lazy and easily-spotted hallucinations." date: "2026-08-03" modified: "2026-08-03" authors: - name: "Victor Tangermann" job_title: "Senior Editor" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/victor" url: "https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/top-consulting-group-pwc-ai-report-bizarre-hallucinations" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "Ethics" --- # Top Consulting Group PwC Caught Using AI on “Thought Leadership” Report About AI, Resulting in Corporate Document Filled With Bizarre Hallucinations ![A color-treated image of a man staring at his laptop in disbelief.]() *Shutterstock / Futurism* PwC, one of the "Big Four" consulting firms, has been caught red-handed publishing "thought leadership" reports about AI riddled with lazy and easily-spotted hallucinations. As the [*Financial Times* reports](), four reports published between 2024 and 2026, were meant to solicit consulting work for partners in the Middle East. But as investigators from AI detector firm GPTZero [found](), the reports were an utter mess, chock full of "hallucinated (vibe) citations, fabricated claims, and incomprehensible drafting and formatting decisions." The offending reports contained "claims that are unrelated to or contradicted by the cited source." For instance, a 2025 report included an entire section about a framework known as "Citizen Pulse," which it alleged was being deployed by governments around the world. However, GPTZero found that the framework didn't actually exist and was entirely hallucinated by an AI, including supporting citations. The findings highlight just how pervasive AI hallucinations have become, from lawyers [being reprimanded]() by judges after being caught [including fake legal citations]() in court documents to [entire academic fields being inundated]() with dubious AI-generated papers. Even prestigious consulting firms are providing their clients with shoddy and entirely unverified slop, raising plenty of uncomfortable questions about the quality of their professional services. Just last month, another Big Four firm, KPMG, was [caught including copious amounts of AI hallucinations]() in a report about how to integrate AI agents "across investment advisory, risk management and compliance monitoring." The latest case is particularly egregious considering several of PwC's slop-heavy reports were explicitly about "agentic" AI bots, including a guide for governments on how to improve public services for autonomous vehicles. The extent of the slop is baffling. One of the PwC reports included a footnote referencing a teenage blogger on Medium with 280 followers being cited as a source for a JPMorgan agentic AI initiative. GPTZero researcher Paul Esau found that a different PwC report had cited the same (correct) claim that human error is responsible for 90 percent of traffic accidents three times in just two pages, while using three different sources, something that "no human" would do, as he told the *FT*. In response, PwC downplayed the findings and failed to take accountability. In a statement to the newspaper, PwC Middle East claimed that it "takes the accuracy of our published research seriously and is updating a limited number of supporting citations" in the reports. "Consistent with our approach to responsible AI, we have quality control processes for research and content development we expect all our people to adhere to." **More on hallucinations:** [*Consulting Firm’s Report on How Awesome AI Is Found to Contain Idiotic AI Hallucinations*]() ## Author I've been at Futurism since 2017, where my role has evolved to encompass design, writing, and increasingly editing. I've always been fascinated by space exploration and advanced transportation, which I've leaned into by interviewing luminaries in those fields while closely following the dimensions of policy and regulation that allow next-generation projects to succeed -- or, sometimes, to fail. I'm also keenly interested in the effects of generative AI on society, policies, and democratic institutions, as well as clean energy, physics and biology, and the vagaries of tech leadership. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Ars Technica, Gizmodo, PC Magazine, Jalopnik, Fox News, and the New York Post. I spent my childhood living in locations including Manila, the Philippines, and Geneva, Switzerland, attended McGill University, and now live in Toronto, Canada. Before Futurism I worked at AskMen and a small photography studio. In my free time, I'm an avid gardener, foodie, and craft beer lover, as well as a maker of artisanal hot pepper sauces. I have a magnificent dog named Freida. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()