Case Study · Work Product QA
Deloitte refunded part of a government contract after AI-assisted errors
What happened
Deloitte delivered an independent review of Australia's Targeted Compliance Framework for the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations, under a contract worth roughly A$440,000. After publication, questions emerged about incorrect citations and references, including a fabricated quote attributed to a Federal Court ruling. Deloitte agreed to refund the final instalment of the contract.
A later review clarified the fuller picture: AI (Azure OpenAI GPT-4o, not public ChatGPT) was used in a technical workstream of the corrected report, while citations were done manually. The accurate version of this story isn't "Deloitte pasted a report into ChatGPT" - it's that a professional deliverable containing unverified AI-assisted output made it out the door with errors intact.
The business problem
A professional deliverable can be undermined by even a small number of unverified AI outputs slipping through.
What could have helped
- Require human verification of every citation and factual claim before delivery
- Separate AI-assisted drafting from final review - never merge the two
- Build a QA framework specifically for AI-assisted work product
- Disclose where and how AI was used in a deliverable