Deloitte will partially reimburse the federal government after acknowledging the use of artificial intelligence in a $440,000 report that contained multiple errors.

The Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (DEWR) hired Deloitte to assess its targeted compliance framework and IT system in December 2024, but the report was returned with errors in the references and footnotes.

The report has since been corrected with deleted references and footnotes, corrections to errors and a new reference list.

“I think it’s good if it’s AI, because to think of a person doing that is almost worse.

“It’s very disrespectful to those who have done the research to just not get it right.” 

The report was corrected in September, after the mistakes were first reported by the Australian Financial Review in August.

A revised report was re-uploaded to the website on Friday, specifying a “small number of corrections to references and footnotes” which it claimed “do not impact or affect the substantive content, findings, and recommendations in the report”.

Deloitte also admitted that it had utilized “a generative artificial intelligence (AI) large language model (Azure OpenAI GPT-4o) based tool chain licensed by DEWR and hosted on DEWR’s Azure tenancy” as part of its methodology.

However, the firm, which operates its own AI Institute to guide clients and the industry on AI adoption and proficiency, declined to confirm if AI was responsible for the mistakes.

Instead, a Deloitte spokesperson simply said: “The matter has been resolved directly with the client.”