from the doesn't-anyone-check-anything? dept Given how often we’ve seen AI-generated fake citations show up in legal filings and even legal decisions , you’d think the lesson would have sunk in by now: if you’re going to use AI to help draft something, you have to actually check what it produces. Apparently that lesson has not reached every government ministry. Researcher Damien Charlotin was hunting for hallucinated citations using software he’d built for exactly that purpose, when he flagged something worth pausing on: South Africa’s proposed national AI policy contained at least four citations that don’t appear to exist . The policy that contained hallucinated citations was, in part, a policy about the dangers of AI-generated misinformation. And, days later, South Africa withdrew the proposal entirely . South Africa has withdrawn its first draft national AI policy after revelations that it ​contained fictitious sources in its reference list ‌which appeared to have been AI-generated.…