Fabrication and errors in the bibliographic citations generated by ChatGPT - Scientific Reports

What this source establishes

The study claims that although GPT-4 is more reliable than GPT-3.5, both models can generate fabricated bibliographic citations and make errors in genuine references. This is because 55% of GPT-3.5’s citations and 18% of GPT-4’s citations were fabricated, while 43% and 24% of their respective genuine citations contained substantial errors.

Limitations

2023 models and selected prompts; not a current universal hallucination rate.

Supporting excerpt

Abstract Although chatbots such as ChatGPT can facilitate cost-effective text generation and editing, factually incorrect responses (hallucinations) limit their utility. This study evaluates one particular type of hallucination: fabricated bibliographic citations that do not represent actual scholarly works. We used ChatGPT-3.5 and ChatGPT-4 to produce short literature reviews on 42 multidisciplinary topics, compiling data on the 636 bibliographic citations (references) found in the 84 papers. We then searched multiple databases and websites to determine the prevalence of fabricated citations, to identify errors in the citations to non-fabricated papers, and to evaluate adherence to APA citation format. Within this set of documents, 55% of the GPT-3.5 citations but just 18% of the GPT-4 citations are fabricated. Likewise, 43% of the real (non-fabricated) GPT-3.5 citations but just 24% of the real GPT-4 citations include substantive citation errors. Although GPT-4 is a major improvement over GPT-3.5, problems remain.