Between the two of us, we reviewed 22 paper submissions this summer, spread across Neur IPS, WACV, and Terra Bytes (a geospatial workshop at ECCV). 68% contained fabricated citations, fabricated author lists for existing papers, or were clearly LLM‑generated. This is called being in the “slop trenches” (i.e. dealing with the output of AI slop cannons).

A Nature analysis from April found at least tens of thousands of 2025 publications “probably” contain invalid AI‑generated references. Zhao et al. estimated roughly 146,900 hallucinated citations in 2025 alone, spread thinly across many papers. The Lancet audit found the share of papers with at least one fabricated reference rose six‑fold in two years, from one in 2,828 papers in 2023 to one in 458 in 2025, reaching one in 277 in early 2026.

Caleb and Isaac each reviewed 11 papers, with five each containing hallucinated authors or citations. In two WACV submissions, reference [1] listed hallucinated authors for real papers. Both position papers were LLM‑generated slop, one of which contained the ramblings of an agentic madman.

Peer review is unpaid work that we do because peer review on our own work is so valuable. Spending hours going through a submission and then realizing that there are hallucinated citations is infuriating as it is a waste of our time!