Author fakes optical soliton paper with AI tools, IEEE catches it
A journalist used free AI tools—ChatGPT and Gemini—to generate a fake academic paper on optical solitons, their Ph.D. topic, and submitted it to IEEE Access for review. The experiment tested how easily AI-generated content could bypass publishers’ defenses. After about two dozen prompts, the models produced a paper with fabricated references, dense but unvalidated math, and stylistic quirks like…
Key points
- IEEE Access rejected both AI-generated papers: one for fabricated references, the other for preprint-heavy citations and AI artifacts in figures
- FARS, an autonomous research system, created a research proposal in 21 minutes and a full paper in two hours with no human input after the initial prompt
- Journalist used free versions of ChatGPT and Gemini, breaking the paper into sections and switching models when one stalled
A second attempt used FARS, an autonomous research system that generated a research proposal in 21 minutes, conducted a computational experiment overnight, and wrote a submission-ready paper in two hours. Though FARS’s references were real, IEEE rejected it for over-reliance on non-peer-reviewed preprints and AI-generated artifacts in figures. The experiment highlights how AI can automate research workflows, blurring the line between human and machine contributions, while publishers struggle to keep pace with detection tools.
I Used AI to Fake a Scientific Paper. Here’s What Happened
IEEE Spectrum AI · 27 October 2026
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This text was published by IEEE Spectrum AI and written by Benjamin Skuse. It is reproduced here with attribution so you can read it in full; the rights remain with the publisher. Read it at the source ↗
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