Irrelevant Reference
This entry is a placeholder. I am currently cataloguing both the fake citations that are shown in real cases and the citation graph of real AI hallucination cases. The canonical write-up is still in progress and is currently incomplete, with stub articles generated from the data in the Interactive Map of AI Hallucination Sanctions Cases. Please don't treat it as final or authoritative yet.
Definition
An irrelevant reference is a citation to a real case that the AI describes accurately — but that simply isn't germane to the proposition it is cited for: a non-sequitur. Unlike a pure hallucination, a mutant / synthetic citation, or a hallucinated summary, nothing about the case itself is fabricated — the failure is one of relevance. It is the subtlest type to catch, because both "does the case exist?" and "is the summary accurate?" pass.
Why it matters
Worked examples
Cases with examples of this failure mode
- Garner v. Kadince (Utah Court of Appeals, 2025) — 1 instance