The Technology sector’s love affair with AI has always had a whiff of irony to it, but this one takes the cake. KPMG, one of the biggest professional services firms on the planet, recently had to pull a report titled “Redefining excellence in the age of agentic AI” after several major organizations came forward and said the thing simply wasn’t true.
According to financial Times reporting, GPTZero, a research group that specializes in detecting AI-generated content, flagged numerous inaccuracies in the report, which was published back in October 2025. The firm basically used AI to write a report about AI, and the whole thing fell apart. Classic.
Here’s where it gets really awkward. UBS, the UK’s National Health Service, Swiss Federal Railways, and Transport for London all told the FT that KPMG’s claims about their AI adoption and usage were either untrue or deeply misleading. That’s a lot of very serious organizations with very serious public reputations who wanted nothing to do with what KPMG had written about them.
A KPMG spokesperson said the firm removed the report from its websites while conducting its own investigation. “We expect all our people to follow our guidelines on the responsible use of AI, including human oversight to validate content and verify independent sources,” they added. You have to wonder what happened there.
This isn’t an isolated incident either. Last month, EY withdrew a report on loyalty rewards programs that appeared to include fake footnotes and AI hallucinations. The big consulting firms are apparently struggling to practice what they preach when it comes to AI adoption.
It’s a stark reminder that the AI hype machine is running far ahead of anyone’s ability to properly verify what’s being produced. When the consultants can’t get their own house in order, what hope does the rest of us have?
