AI incident ·
South African Home Affairs Revised White Paper Reportedly Included Fictitious References Believed to Be AI-Generated
In brief
An AI system built by Large Language Model Developers and Generative Ai Developers and deployed by South African Department Of Home Affairs, Government Of South Africa and 1 other allegedly harmed General Public Of South Africa, General Public and 2 others.
- Risk domain
- Not classified
- Occurred
- Coverage
- 3 reports
What happened
South Africa's Department of Home Affairs reportedly appended apparent AI-generated fictitious references to its Cabinet-approved Revised White Paper on Citizenship, Immigration and Refugee Protection. The department said the references were not cited in the body, withdrew the standalone list, suspended two senior officials, and commissioned an independent review of policy documents produced since November 2022. It maintained that the paper's substantive policy positions were unaffected.
Laws that address this harm
No recorded instrument yet addresses this use case where it happened. See the open queue.
Matched from the record's risk domain and country to the instruments recorded here. A reviewer can correct the match in the repository (data/external/incident_overrides.yaml).
News reports (3)
Titles link to the original publisher; report text is not reproduced here.
Who was involved
- Alleged deployer
- South African Department Of Home Affairs, Government Of South Africa, Government Agencies
- Alleged developer
- Large Language Model Developers, Generative Ai Developers
- Alleged harmed party
- General Public Of South Africa, General Public, Epistemic Integrity, Citizenship Immigration And Refugee Policy Stakeholders
Classification (MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy)
- Risk domain
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- Risk subdomain
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- Causal entity
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- Intent
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- Timing
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- Harm level
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- Sectors
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- Countries
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Source record: incident #1548 on the AI Incident Database · all 3 reports