Western Australia’s government is seeking a fast refund from Deloitte over a flawed report on merging three of the state’s universities. The report contained AI-generated references to sources that do not exist, as well as wrong cost totals.

A government spokesperson told Guardian Australia that the state was very disappointed and had written to Deloitte to speed up the refund. The state paid A$166,000 for the study.

Deloitte wrote the cost-benefit analysis for a plan to merge the University of Western Australia, Curtin University, and Murdoch University. Deloitte said in the report that it used generative AI to help gather research, summarise information, and proofread.

Critics first flagged the made-up references earlier in October, starting with a post on Reddit, Times Higher Education reported . At the time, Deloitte called them minor errors, and the government told it to fix and reissue the report.

Since then, Guardian Australia has found sums in the report’s appendix that are wrong.…