Officials suspended over AI hallucinations in policy paper

The Department of Home Affairs (DHA) is suspending senior officials after finding apparent AI hallucinations in the Revised White Paper on Citizenship, Immigration & Refugee Protection, which was recently approved by Cabinet. The department put a chief director under precautionary suspension on Thursday afternoon, while another director involved in the drafting process will be officially suspended today (Monday). The DHA was alerted to the made-up references in the white paper by News24, which found that large parts of the reference list were not verifiable or plainly fictitious. While some references cannot be found at all, others are characterised by mismatches in author names, titles, publication dates or links, suggesting they were likely fabricated. Several academic titles cited are fictitious, and multiple reports or documents attributed to international institutions cannot be traced using the references given, and are supported by links that lead to non-existent pages. Several of the flawed references mix two strings of sources, neither of which is traceable. In multiple cases, the references cite existing titles, but by the wrong authors and with the wrong publication dates.

Last week, another News24 investigation found that academic journal articles cited in SA’s Draft National AI Policy were completely fictitious. The most likely explanation for how this happened, ironically, is that an AI model hallucinated them. Communications and Digital Technologies Minister Solly Malatsi withdrew the draft policy the following day. The DHA said it had appointed two independent law firms to manage the disciplinary process and review all policy documents it produced dating back to 30 November 2022, when the first Large Language Model was released. ‘Based on the department’s initial internal review, the problem appears to be related to the list of references appended to the revised white paper. It seems that these references were generated and attached to the document after the fact, as they are not cited in the body of the text. Consequently, the department has withdrawn the reference list, pending the finalisation of the independent probe to determine how the hallucinations came to be added to the list,’ the DHA said in a statement.

Full News24 report