KPMG report contained AI hallucinations on benefits of . . . AI

KPMG’s study is the latest in a number of apparent AI hallucinations in reports by professional services firms. Keystone / Christian Beutler

A KPMG report on how AI is being used by businesses across the world exaggerated adoption of the technology with bogus case studies that appear to have been based on AI hallucinations.

The October report, “Redefining excellence in the age of agentic AI”, made numerous false claims about the use of AI by organisations including the Swiss bank UBS, the UK’s National Health Service and the public transit groups Swiss Federal Railways and Transport for London.

The inaccuracies were identified as AI hallucinations by the research group GPTZero and verified by the FT. After being alerted to the issue, UBS said it would ask KPMG to remove the false claims, and the Big Four firm on Thursday pulled the report from some of its websites.

The discovery is the latest in a number of apparent AI hallucinations in reports by professional services firms and follows EY’s retraction of a study last month over fake footnotes and other errors identified by GPTZero.

The KPMG report claimed global wealth manager UBS “integrates AI agents across investment advisory, risk management and compliance monitoring”.

KPMG wrote: “These agents operate within a composable platform co-developed with Microsoft, enabling personalised, efficient and compliant financial journeys.”

A spokesperson for the bank told the FT the assertions were “factually incorrect”.

The study additionally said Swiss Federal Railways offers AI agents that “help users plan, book, and optimise journeys based on preferences, real-time conditions and carbon impact, turning SBB into a holistic mobility orchestrator”.

‘Not accurate’ and ‘misleading’

A spokesperson for the railway confirmed the assertion was “not accurate”.

KPMG’s study also claimed that Transport for London was using AI agents “to predict and manage congestion, personalise commuter updates and co-ordinate multimodal transport”.

A spokesperson for the transit system said the assertion was “misleading”.

A claim by KPMG that NHS Greater Manchester uses AI agents to predict hospital readmissions, triage patients and automate referrals “doesn’t really align” with the press release it appeared to be based on, a spokesperson said.

Footnotes show the assertion stemmed from a communiqué about an AI tool designed to combat lung cancer. In it, there is no mention of agentic AI carrying out such tasks.

KPMG report removed

A spokesman for KPMG International said the firm “takes the accuracy and integrity of its published content seriously” and that it had removed the report from websites while it investigates the circumstances surrounding the report’s publication.

“We expect all our people to follow our guidelines on the responsible use of AI, including human oversight to validate content and verify independent sources,” he said.

Edward Tian, GPTZero chief executive, said error-riddled publications by the Big Four “poison the well of information”. KPMG’s findings have already been referenced by multiple industry publications as well as a big Czech newspaper, according to GPTZero’s research.

Big consultancies such as KPMG and EY are viewed as highly credible, so their reliance on false information “increases the risk of second-hand hallucinations”, Tian said.

Hallucinations: a growing problem

Consulting firms such as KPMG are heavily marketing their services to corporate customers as advisers on the adoption of AI, including how to use the technology responsibly and implement policies to avoid errors. In the past few years, they have pumped out hundreds of “thought leadership” pieces on AI to help attract clients.

“Redefining excellence in the age of agentic AI” was distributed by KPMG consulting groups in several different countries, containing local marketing contacts.

Hallucinations are a growing problem across the professional services. Elite law firm Sullivan & Cromwell also admitted in April that a filing it submitted in a bankruptcy case contained numerous AI-generated inaccuracies, including misreadings of the US bankruptcy code.

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