KPMG pulls AI report after fabricated case studies exposed

KPMG withdrew its “Total Experience” report after GPTZero found only 5 of 45 citations accurately pointed to real sources, per the Financial Times.ft
The report falsely claimed UBS ↗2.15%, NHS Greater Manchester, and Transport for London had deployed AI agent systems unsupported by cited materials.gptzero
GPTZero called the errors “consistent, glaring, and unlikely to be human in origin,” suggesting staff used an AI tool without verifying its output.gptzero

KPMG Withdraws AI Report After Fabricated Case Studies Exposed as Hallucinations

KPMG has pulled a flagship report on artificial intelligence and customer experience after researchers discovered it contained fabricated case studies and hallucinated citations attributed to major organizations including UBS, NHS Greater Manchester, Transport for London, and Swiss Federal Railways.

The report, titled “Total Experience: Redefining Excellence in the Age of Agentic AI,” was published by KPMG International in October 2025. The inaccuracies were identified by AI detection research group GPTZero and verified by the Financial Times, which reported the findings on Thursday.ft

Systemic Fabrication Uncovered

GPTZero’s investigation found that of the report’s 45 citations, only five accurately pointed to real sources. Another 28 contained paraphrased titles or fabricated components, while 12 were too vague to verify. The group concluded that approximately half of the claims evidenced by the citations appeared to be “fake or misattributed — likely the result of an AI research tool over-complying with a request to find examples of ‘agentic AI’ in the wild”.gptzero

The case studies presented elaborate but false narratives. In the case of UBS, the report cited a Fintech Magazine article but made claims about the Swiss bank integrating AI agents across investment advisory and risk management via a platform co-developed with Microsoft — assertions the source material did not support. The Swiss Federal Railways case study claimed the rail operator was using AI agents for multimodal mobility, but the cited source contained no mention of artificial intelligence agents.gptzero

Similarly, the report’s NHS Greater Manchester entry described AI-powered lung cancer diagnosis capabilities that went well beyond what the actual source documented, while the Transport for London case study cited a startup blog post that contained no reference to AI agents.gptzero

A Broader Pattern

GPTZero’s researchers concluded that the errors were “consistent, glaring, and unlikely to be human in origin,” suspecting that KPMG staff used an AI-powered research tool to generate citations and case studies without human verification. The citation errors followed patterns typical of large language model outputs: consistently paraphrased titles, topics mistaken for authors, and redundant information across citation components.gptzero

The incident marks the latest in a series of embarrassments for major consulting firms. GPTZero noted it had previously uncovered hallucinated citations in reports from Deloitte and Ernst & Young, with EY reportedly retracting a cybersecurity study in May 2026. KPMG has removed the report from its website.startupfortune