this is definitely a problem in and of itself; particularly if the references were only added *after the fact* (the writing) and not used as an a priori to support claims or assertions.
Part of the problem is that *even if the references do exist* ("the links go were they're supposed to") there's still a big risk of misattribution and misreferencing when following this approach.
I've tested this myself with my own article to see if GPT4o and GPT5o would refer to my study through a relevant prompt; in one case, it didn't refer to the study at all (even though it has 250+ citations to date, and it's from 2019), in the other, it referred to the study but got the methods/approach wrong (I later found out that those methods belonged to a different publication, not mine).
Long-story short, if all the references were known *a priori* by the author and it was a case of mere retrieval, I could see how it'd be less of a problem (still weird to use GPT for this given we already have accurate search engines for this purpose).
If the author was using GPT to *search* for references they were not already familiar with, and doing this a posteriori once they had already written the piece (so, an a posteriori add-on of study references to support claims already made), then it is a big, big issue.
Virginia Conde
npub13r…dcrzr
2026-07-18 07:51:31 UTC
in reply to nevent1q…agnm
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npub13rmv3evq02q0qg5lth0vmhd0efm7dk5da5c40s42u57psx28lm6spdcrzrSeen on
wss://relay.momostr.pinkPublished at
2026-07-18 07:51:31 UTCEvent JSON
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"content": "this is definitely a problem in and of itself; particularly if the references were only added *after the fact* (the writing) and not used as an a priori to support claims or assertions. \n\nPart of the problem is that *even if the references do exist* (\"the links go were they're supposed to\") there's still a big risk of misattribution and misreferencing when following this approach.\n\nI've tested this myself with my own article to see if GPT4o and GPT5o would refer to my study through a relevant prompt; in one case, it didn't refer to the study at all (even though it has 250+ citations to date, and it's from 2019), in the other, it referred to the study but got the methods/approach wrong (I later found out that those methods belonged to a different publication, not mine).\n\nLong-story short, if all the references were known *a priori* by the author and it was a case of mere retrieval, I could see how it'd be less of a problem (still weird to use GPT for this given we already have accurate search engines for this purpose). \n\nIf the author was using GPT to *search* for references they were not already familiar with, and doing this a posteriori once they had already written the piece (so, an a posteriori add-on of study references to support claims already made), then it is a big, big issue.",
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