AI incident #559 · 30 June 2023

Grant Reviewers Reportedly Fed Applications into Generative AI to Produce Reports, Allegedly Breaching Confidentiality

Open on the AI Incident Database 2 news reports Snapshot 7 Sep 2026

What happened

Peer reviewers of Australian government grant applications reportedly inserted applicants' work into generative AI systems such as ChatGPT to generate assessment reports, which allegedly posed confidentiality and security issues.

Only the incident metadata is stored here. The underlying news reports are on the AI Incident Database (CC BY-SA 4.0); use the links above to read them.

News reports (2)

Coverage catalogued by the AI Incident Database. Titles link to the original publisher; the text is not reproduced here.

4 Jul 2023
ChatGPT used in peer reviews of Australian Research Council grant applications
itnews.com.au · Jeremy Nadel · AIID #3193
8 Jul 2023
Are Australian Research Council reports being written by ChatGPT?
theguardian.com · Donna Lu · AIID #3269

Who was involved

Alleged deployer: Openai
Alleged developer: Openai, Large Language Model Developers, Chatbot Developers
Alleged harmed party: Research Grant Applicants, Research Grant Administrators, Privacy, Grant Applicants, Government Of Australia

Classification (MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy)

Risk domain: Malicious Actors & Misuse
Risk subdomain: 4.3 Fraud, scams, and targeted manipulation
Causal entity: Human
Intent: Intentional
Timing: Post-deployment
Harm level: —
Sectors: —
Countries: —

Risk entries describing this failure mode

Entries from the MIT AI Risk Repository coded to subdomain 4.3.

Impersonation/identity theft
"Impersonation/identity theft - Theft of an individual, group or organisation’s identity by a third-party in order to defraud, mock or otherwise harm them."
A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)
IP/copyright loss
"IP/copyright loss - Misuse or abuse of an individual or organisation’s intellectual property, including copyright, trademarks, and patents."
A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)
Dehumanisation/objectification
"Dehumanisation/objectification - Use or misuse of a technology system to depict and/or treat people as not human, less than human, or as objects."
A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)
Defamation/libel/slander
"Defamation/libel/slander - Use of a technology system to create, facilitate or amplify false perception(s) about an individual, group, or organisation."
A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)
Financial and business
"Financial and Business - Use or misuse of a technology system in a manner that damages the financial interests of an individual or group, or which causes strategic, operational, legal or financial harm to a business or...
A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)
Cheating/plagiarism
"Cheating/plagiarism - Use of another person’s or group’s words or ideas without consent and/or acknowledgement."
A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)
Cybersecurity
"LLMs may exacerbate cybersecurity risks in various ways (Newman, 2024). Firstly, LLMs may significantly amplify the effectiveness of deceptive operations aimed at tricking people into disclosing sensitive information or...
Foundational Challenges in Assuring Alignment and Safety of Large Language Models (Anwar2024)
Domain-Specific Misuses
"Improvements in LLMs may exert greater pressure to apply LLMs to various domains, such as health and education (Eloundou et al., 2023). Crude efforts to use LLMs in such domains, however, may incur harm and should be di...
Foundational Challenges in Assuring Alignment and Safety of Large Language Models (Anwar2024)

Incidents in the same risk subdomain

All incidents in this subdomain