{"slug": "pwc-sells-advice-on-using-ai-responsibly-its-own-reports-were-written-by-a-one", "title": "PwC sells advice on using AI responsibly. Its own reports were written by a careless one.", "summary": "PwC's Middle East thought-leadership reports on AI and electric vehicles contained fake footnotes, misattributed claims, and made-up sources, with one footnote's web address carrying the tag \"utm_source=chatgpt.com,\" according to the Financial Times and AI-detection firm GPTZero. The errors, flagged as AI hallucinations, make PwC the latest Big Four consultancy caught publishing AI-generated slop, following similar incidents at KPMG, EY, and Deloitte, undermining their own advice on responsible AI use.", "body_md": "The world’s biggest consultancies are selling companies expensive advice on how to adopt AI without getting burned. Their own reports keep getting burned.\n\nPwC is the latest to be caught. Four of its Middle East “thought leadership” reports were a mess, [the Financial Times reported](https://www.ft.com/content/7e149ac8-2ce2-4266-8940-192f9821b33c). The reports, on AI and electric vehicles, carried fake footnotes, misattributed claims and made-up sources. The research group GPTZero flagged the errors as AI hallucinations, and the FT verified them.\n\n## A footnote that ended in ‘chatgpt.com’\n\nThe giveaways were not subtle. One report cited a PwC survey claiming 70% of Middle East chief executives expect generative AI to reshape their business. The footnote linked to a news article that never mentioned the survey. Another footnote’s web address still carried the tag “utm_source=chatgpt.com.”\n\n“The chaotic signposting of source material is symptomatic of AI-generated research,” GPTZero’s Paul Esau told the FT. This is a firm that markets itself as an adviser on using AI responsibly, including how to avoid exactly these errors.\n\n## All four, now\n\nPwC is not alone. It completes an unwanted set. GPTZero’s earlier work pushed KPMG to pull an October report. It had made [false claims](https://www.ft.com/content/b3828e92-4961-4b39-84f0-c42f33be3c3f) about AI use at UBS, the UK’s NHS and Transport for London. EY retracted a study last month over fake footnotes. Deloitte has twice slipped AI fabrications into government reports, including a [$1.6m health plan](https://theindependent.ca/news/lji/major-n-l-healthcare-report-contains-errors-likely-generated-by-a-i/) in Canada that cited papers which do not exist.\n\nThe pattern repeats each time. The Big Four have pumped out hundreds of AI thought-leadership pieces to win clients, while pushing their own staff to use AI to work faster. The result is [AI slop](https://thenextweb.com/news/ai-slop-crackdown-faceless-creators-collateral-damage) with a blue-chip logo on it.\n\n## Do as we say\n\nThe timing is almost too neat. The same week, PwC’s US chief executive Paul Griggs was telling [Business Insider](https://www.businessinsider.com/pwc-us-ceo-companies-getting-wrong-about-ai-2026-7) where companies go wrong with AI. One trap he named was bolting it onto broken processes.\n\n“All AI is going to do for you is tell you how bad your messy process really is,” Griggs said. His own firm just proved him right.\n\n## Marking their own homework\n\nThe awkward part is what it says about the product. These firms charge premium rates for judgment and rigour. Yet no one appears to have checked whether the sources were real. It is the same gap that lets AI-written code [ship with security holes](https://thenextweb.com/news/veracode-2026-genai-code-security-56-percent-pass-rate): the output looks right, so nobody looks closer.\n\nIt also cuts against the sales pitch. Consultants are among the loudest voices telling clients AI will transform their work. Their own reports show how it can quietly corrupt it, and how [the hype outruns](https://thenextweb.com/news/most-enterprise-ai-spend-still-hasnt-left-the-lab) the safe use. The [hallucinations](https://thenextweb.com/news/ai-hallucinations-solution-iris-ai) are the tell, and a detector [keeps finding](https://thenextweb.com/news/superhuman-gptzero-acquisition-ai-detection) them. The firms keep publishing anyway.\n\n## Get the TNW newsletter\n\nGet the most important tech news in your inbox each week.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/pwc-sells-advice-on-using-ai-responsibly-its-own-reports-were-written-by-a-one", "canonical_source": "https://thenextweb.com/news/pwc-gptzero-ai-hallucinations-big-four-reports", "published_at": "2026-07-29 18:34:37+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-29 19:31:15.698231+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-ethics", "ai-safety", "generative-ai", "ai-policy"], "entities": ["PwC", "GPTZero", "Financial Times", "KPMG", "EY", "Deloitte", "Paul Griggs", "Paul Esau"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/pwc-sells-advice-on-using-ai-responsibly-its-own-reports-were-written-by-a-one", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/pwc-sells-advice-on-using-ai-responsibly-its-own-reports-were-written-by-a-one.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/pwc-sells-advice-on-using-ai-responsibly-its-own-reports-were-written-by-a-one.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/pwc-sells-advice-on-using-ai-responsibly-its-own-reports-were-written-by-a-one.jsonld"}}