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LLMs create fake author personas that haunt web and academic publishing

By PulseAugur Editorial · [3 sources] ·

A new research paper reveals that large language models generate correlated "ghost" personas, such as Elena Vasquez and Marcus Chen, who appear across numerous AI-generated documents as experts or co-authors. These correlated name priors are specific to model families and versions, leaving detectable fingerprints. The study found these ghost authors have been used to create over 1,600 fake academic records on repositories like Zenodo, with fabricated publication dates, and have also formed synthetic research groups on platforms like ResearchGate. AI

IMPACT Reveals LLM-generated personas are used to create fake academic records, impacting scholarly integrity and trust in AI-generated content.

RANK_REASON The cluster contains an academic paper detailing novel research findings about LLM behavior and its downstream consequences.

Read on Hugging Face Daily Papers →

AI-generated summary · Google Gemini · from 3 sources. How we write summaries →

LLMs create fake author personas that haunt web and academic publishing

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COVERAGE [3]

  1. arXiv cs.LG TIER_1 English(EN) · Micha{\l} Brzozowski, Neo Christopher Chung ·

    The Ghost Couple: Correlated LLM Name Priors and Their Haunting of the Web and Academic Publishing

    arXiv:2606.02184v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: These names do not exist. Elena Vasquez and Marcus Chen have appeared as volcano experts, astronauts, thriller protagonists, podcast hosts, and academic co-authors across hundreds of independently produced AI-generated documents, …

  2. Hugging Face Daily Papers TIER_1 English(EN) ·

    The Ghost Couple: Correlated LLM Name Priors and Their Haunting of the Web and Academic Publishing

    These names do not exist. Elena Vasquez and Marcus Chen have appeared as volcano experts, astronauts, thriller protagonists, podcast hosts, and academic co-authors across hundreds of independently produced AI-generated documents, never having lived. We show that large language mo…

  3. arXiv cs.LG TIER_1 English(EN) · Neo Christopher Chung ·

    The Ghost Couple: Correlated LLM Name Priors and Their Haunting of the Web and Academic Publishing

    These names do not exist. Elena Vasquez and Marcus Chen have appeared as volcano experts, astronauts, thriller protagonists, podcast hosts, and academic co-authors across hundreds of independently produced AI-generated documents, never having lived. We show that large language mo…

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