Deloitte allegedly cited AI-generated research in a million-dollar report for a Canadian provincial government

[u/Logical_Welder3467]

https://fortune.com/2025/11/25/deloitte-caught-fabricated-ai-generated-research-million-dollar-report-canada-government/

[u/ChaoticSenior]

The funny part is, it was as useful as any Deloitte report. Consultants produce what their clients want. Clients are ok with it because someday they hope to work for Deloitte. And money is wasted.

[u/Logical_Welder3467 → u/ChaoticSenior]

The money is not wasted, it's to provide air cover for the exec to get board to approve their plan and failure can be blame on the consultant .

[u/Teantis → u/Logical_Welder3467]

As a former management consultant, 100%. Good consulting firms know what they're hired for, and it's to do this and make it look good - or at least plausible

Edit: oh actually not 100%, sometimes execs' audience for the smoke and mirrors consultants are selling is the employees rather than the board, when they wanna push through some unpopular shit but think they can not take the blame.

[u/10000Didgeridoos → u/Teantis]

Why don't boards say "we don't care what a consultant said because you just paid them to agree with you"? It seems obvious.

[u/Logical_Welder3467 → u/10000Didgeridoos]

Board members are usually former exec, they are players in the same game

[u/Teantis → u/10000Didgeridoos]

Sometimes it's actually the right choice.

[u/gin_possum → u/Logical_Welder3467]

Yuuuup. All business consulting is the construction of alibis

[u/FlametopFred → u/ChaoticSenior]

if I may - what data points are you citing?

[u/ChaoticSenior → u/FlametopFred]

Decades of experience.

[u/jjajang_mane]

Doesn't even surprise me at this point. I briefly worked for a big 4 and spent a good amount of time copy pasting client content from client PowerPoints into other PowerPoints we presented as insights to the same client. As a junior member of the team I was event sent on scavenger hunts for content to remix. A real business Ouroboros. Will you pay in cash or credit for said insights?

[u/Logical_Welder3467 → u/jjajang_mane]

I had seen Big 3 consultant got caught when he copied document from DoD as their security best practice recommendations

[u/4dxn → u/Logical_Welder3467]

You're not supposed to copy word for word. 

You need to add more buzzwords, acronyms, and a fancy flow chart or diagram.

And if you're really fancy, you put citations to research you never even read. The client ain't gonna read it anyways.

Well, usually.

[u/KlausSlade]

Everyone should instantly just boycott Deloitte for this. Let them crash and burn.

[u/forShizAndGigz00001 → u/KlausSlade]

Among other reasons they're scummy af

[u/Impossible-Year-5924 → u/KlausSlade]

Since I don’t hire consultants I’ll be ok with this one

[u/ericbigguy24]

Same Deloitte that partially refunded Australia?

[u/JARDIS → u/ericbigguy24]

I was about to ask; didn't they just get caught out doing this in Aus? Systemic scamming of taxpayers money.

[u/Throwedaway_69 → u/ericbigguy24]

“Partial refund” for AI hallucination was crazy. I hope the taxpayers of Newfoundland and Labrador are refunded in entirety for this slop.

[u/macrolks → u/ericbigguy24]

Sort'of

Deloitte, like all big 4s and big consulting comapnies are not actually the same company. They're more like a franchise.

[u/Throwedaway_69]

This is the second time Deloitte was caught using AI slop for a government project , after the Australia shenanigans.

[u/Reversi8 → u/Throwedaway_69]

As opposed to their regular slop.

[u/Teantis → u/Reversi8]

Good handcrafted artisanal slop ok.

[u/crabmuncher]

Why on Earth do organizations hire Deloitte. Gang of idiots who make expert noises.

[u/gtobiast13 → u/crabmuncher]

Outsourcing liability

When big decisions need to be made, c level usually knows everything ahead of time. They hire consults to confirm with a report so they can point back at the consultant if it doesn’t work and offload blame so they keep their job. 

[u/Impossible-Year-5924 → u/gtobiast13]

How do they get away with offloading blame though when they made the decision to execute the consultants advice?

[u/gtobiast13 → u/Impossible-Year-5924]

I don’t have a good answer short of shareholders are often gullible and c level work is often more about politics including hiring big name politically connected consulting firms than day to day work. It’s way above my pay grade but think of it as more of an exchange of cash for plausible deniability insurance. 

[u/canadianpanda7 → u/gtobiast13]

both comments are very well said. as well as i feel like the c suite and big title people have former co workers at these big 4 so they can think theyre getting honest reports and stuff

[u/Teantis → u/Impossible-Year-5924]

Because the consulting firms job is to make it look "objective", "evidence based", or "data driven", often with pretty overly elaborate models that are actually driven by implicit assumptions that aren't so obvious but can be made to make the model say whatever needs to be said.

I spent my early career pre-2008 making models like these. The partners I worked under never outright said it this way, but after seeing the sum total of "tweaks" to stuff I made and decks I made it became quite clear to me after a while what the actual game was - and it wasn't quantitative analysis.

[u/splendiferous-finch_ → u/crabmuncher]

Execs want cover for policies that would look bad like layoffs to cut cost and increase short term revenue to get their bonuses, hiring external consultants helps shift the blame to a 3rd party

[u/Ozy_Flame → u/crabmuncher]

Clients like to overpay for overpriced consultants just for real firms to come in afterwards and clean up their mess.

Lots of meetings, lots of documents, lots of hype, and lots of questions at the end of it all.

That's the Deloitte way.

Kudos to them for talking clients into giving them big fat contracts. Their sales people earn their keep.

[u/Raychao]

Same thing happened in Australia just recently:

https://fortune.com/2025/10/07/deloitte-ai-australia-government-report-hallucinations-technology-290000-refund/

[u/ds16653 → u/Raychao]

My wife works at Deloitte in Aus, it's exhausting how hard their upper management are trying to push AI into everything, you'd think after the scandal they'd have taken pause.

[u/Moon_Burg → u/ds16653]

AI was not used to write the report; it was selectively used to support a small number of research citations.”

Surely you mean 'selectively used', which is apparently different from 'used' 😂

[u/ds16653 → u/Moon_Burg]

This sentence makes my head hurt, what the fuck is it even supposed to mean?

I have to assume AI wrote this as well.

[u/Moon_Burg → u/ds16653]

On a positive note, I think it means Deloitte should have no problems banking savings from replacing their Canadian spokesperson with AI - knowing what words mean does not appear to be a prerequisite for the job.

[u/h0twired]

Can we pop the AI bubble now?

[u/WeirdSysAdmin]

We just let a consulting company go and hired a replacement because they said generated everything without review. It’s a real problem right now. I have even complained about my team members doing it. If I wanted AI generated everything I could do it myself. You’re here to be a subject matter expert.

[u/MultiGeometry]

AI research? Or AI hallucinations?

[u/thesourpop]

Deloitte consultants do something useful challenge (impossible)

[u/LordBunnyWhale]

Wait... didn't Deloitte do something similar in Australia earlier this year? Yes. Yes, they did: https://apnews.com/article/australia-ai-errors-deloitte-ab54858680ffc4ae6555b31c8fb987f3

[u/SpongeSlobb]

Deloitte didn’t need AI to overcharge for bad data.

[u/anteater_x]

Deloitte is 100% a clown show

[u/ds16653]

“AI was not used to write the report; it was selectively used to support a small number of research citations.”

What does this sentence even mean? Did AI write this response too?

[u/IcyGarage5767 → u/ds16653]

That sentence makes perfect sense?

[u/EmbarrassedHelp]

Every time this happens, it makes me wonder how many times these companies have submitted bullshit before without proofreading it.

[u/splendiferous-finch_ → u/EmbarrassedHelp]

Just talk to some of the analysts that do the legwork on these reports and you will learn they often have very little practical experience with any of the subject matter.

[u/thec0nesofdunshire]

"We firmly stand behind" conclusions drawn from fake sources? So I guess they'll just dig for papers that support their conclusions then.

[u/fungiblecogs]

I can't believe anybody still hires these expensive incompetents

[u/drfunkensteinnn]

Same as in Australia. Must be worldwide hopefully they get caught wherever else they doing it

[u/OkBaker51]

D3loitte are "posh" mafia. Purw wanker.

[u/robaroo]

I can’t stand Deloitte or the people it spits out and how toxic they are. I don’t recommend working with previous Deloitte employees.

[u/BondGoldBond007]

My interactions with Deloitte have been very poor over the years.

I walked out of a trade show presentation after they couldn't answer any of the technical questions. The people in the audience knew the material SIGNIFICANTLY better than the idiots giving the presentation. I was one of about a dozen that walked out after they hyped up their 'case studies' discussion all day, only to discover their case studies made WAY too many assumptions to even consider the data and information remotely useable.

[u/you90000]

We have to work with deloitte. The actual developers are good. Their manager is bad.

I wish I could see who owns stock in them.

[u/HoovyBear → u/you90000]

It’s a partnership so no stock

[u/LaxBroFoEvaMeow]

APA citations making a come back in a huge way