KPMG pulled an AI report after it was found to contain fabricated case studies about how major organizations use AI, raising concerns about how consulting firms vet their own work.

What happened

KPMG's report titled "Redefining excellence in the age of agentic AI" included false claims about AI use at UBS, the UK's NHS, Swiss Federal Railways, and Transport for London. GPTZero uncovered the fabrications and the Financial Times verified them; all named organizations disputed the claims. KPMG has since pulled the report from several websites.

Why it matters

GPTZero CEO Edward Tian flagged that flawed reports from major consulting firms spread what he calls "secondary hallucinations"—these reports are treated as credible sources and get recycled by both AI systems and people, amplifying the misinformation. The root cause appears to be careless sourcing: citations are loose paraphrases of real sources with missing URLs or authors, and in some cases no original source existed at all. This practice, called "vibe citing," shows KPMG failed to apply the rigor it claims to sell clients.

What to watch

The incident is particularly damaging for KPMG because the firm is selling AI adoption services to clients while simultaneously demonstrating it cannot reliably handle AI research itself. A German court recently ruled Google liable for similar sourcing problems in its AI Overviews product, suggesting regulatory scrutiny of flawed AI-generated content may increase.