One mistake of multinational professional services company Deloitte cost it dearly. Due to which now he will have to give refund to the Australian government. In fact, the Australian government had got a report prepared from the company by paying a fee of $ 4,40,000 (about ₹ 2.9 crore). But, mistakes were found in the report. After this, the company has now agreed to return a part of the fees of about Rs 2.9 crore to the government.
Regarding the mistakes in the report, the company has admitted that it had used Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) in preparing the government report and later many mistakes were found in that report. Australia’s Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (DEWR) has confirmed that this decision has been taken due to the flaws found in the report.
errors in report
According to the Guardian report, Australia’s Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (DEWR) said that Deloitte will return the last installment when the refund process is completed.
The government had given the responsibility to Deloitte in 2024 to review the Targeted Compliance Framework (TCF) and its related IT systems. This system imposes automatic penalty on those unemployed who do not fulfill the conditions set under the welfare schemes.
Mistakes made in the use of AI
This report was published in July 2025. Now many major flaws were pointed out in this report – like system defects and lack of coordination between law and framework. But the Australian Financial Review (AFR) later discovered several errors in the report — such as false references and fabricated quotes. After this, Deloitte was heavily criticized.
Professor Christopher Rudge of Sydney University said that this is the result of AI hallucination – that is, when AI creates false or fabricated information from data.
On Friday, DEWR released an updated version of the report, acknowledging that parts of the report were created with the help of the Azure OpenAI GPT4o model.
What did Deloitte say?
Deloitte claimed that the use of AI did not affect the main content, conclusions or references of the report. The company said, there is no change in the basic facts of the report due to these updates. A Deloitte spokesperson said the matter has been resolved directly with the client.
Labor Party criticized
But Labor Party senator Deborah ONeill strongly criticized the company. He said, Deloitte has a problem of human understanding. This would be funny if it weren’t so embarrassing. It’s half refund, half apology for shoddy work. O’Neil also said that government agencies should look at who is actually doing the work — humans or AI. He said sarcastically, perhaps instead of hiring big consulting companies, the government should directly take subscription of ChatGPT.
