South Africa’s attempt to set out a national AI roadmap has run into the exact problem the policy was meant to help manage: artificial intelligence making things up.
Communications Minister Solly Malatsi has withdrawn the country’s draft national AI policy after News24 found that several of its cited sources did not exist. The document, released for public comment on April 10, was designed to position South Africa as a serious player in AI innovation while addressing the technology’s social, economic and ethical risks.
It also proposed the creation of an AI commission, an ethics board and a regulatory authority. Those are not small-ticket ideas. They are the kind of institutions meant to guide how a country handles a fast-moving technology that can reshape workplaces, public services and education.
Fake sources in a policy about AI
According to News24, at least six of the draft policy’s 67 citations were AI-generated “hallucinations,” meaning references that looked plausible but pointed to articles that were not real.
The fake citations reportedly referred to legitimate academic journals, which made the issue harder to spot at a glance. Editors from the journals named in the draft independently confirmed that the cited articles were fabricated.
