PwC Middle East Reports Found Riddled with AI-Generated Misinformation
PwC Middle East published four thought leadership reports between 2024 and 2026 that were reportedly riddled with AI-generated hallucinations, fabricated citations, and unverifiable claims about government adoption of its products. An investigation by GPTZero found one report was 84–100 per cent AI-generated and contained false assertions about the use of PwC's 'Citizen Pulse' framework by multiple governments, raising concerns about misinformation gaining credibility through major firms' branding.
What happened
PwC Middle East published four 'thought leadership' reports between 2024 and 2026 that were found by AI detection firm GPTZero to contain hallucinations, fake footnotes, and fabricated citations.
The 2025 report 'Transforming Governance' promoting PwC's 'Citizen Pulse' framework was flagged as 84 per cent likely to be entirely AI-generated (100 per cent excluding references) and claimed the product was used by governments of Denmark, Saudi Arabia, the United States, and Australia, but GPTZero found no public evidence these deals took place.
The reports contained misattributed claims, unverifiable information, inconsistent statements about products, conflated statistics, and in one case cited ChatGPT as a source in a URL.
Reported impact
According to GPTZero co-founder Alex Cui, the misinformation 'can gain an unwarranted veneer of authority' when published under a major consultancy's byline, particularly when making serious claims about government adoption of technology that cannot be substantiated.
Index analysis
The reports did not follow normal academic or consultancy citation conventions, with only 10 of 17 citations in one report's reference section actually corresponding to numbered footnotes in the body.
Inconsistencies between describing 'Citizen Pulse' as both a potential framework and an existing product in use by governments is described as a common symptom of poorly-prompted large language model output.
Governance controls
PwC Middle East stated it takes the accuracy of published research seriously and is updating a limited number of supporting citations in the mentioned reports.
The firm noted it has quality control processes for research and content development that all staff are expected to follow, consistent with its approach to Responsible AI.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.