A network of fake academic journals masquerading as legitimate publications has published more than a hundred AI-generated papers in recent months, in some cases using the names of real professors at top universities without their knowledge.
Vasant Dhar, a very real professor of data science and AI at New York University, was one of the academics caught in the slop onslaught.
In late March, one of Dhar’s colleagues reached out to him about an odd new article listed under Dhar’s name in the International Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (IJAIR). The paper also appeared on Dhar’s profile on Google Scholar, a service many academics use to track peers’ work.
The article’s content and style seemed different from Dhar’s previous papers — and for good reason. Dhar had not written the piece and did not know what his colleague was referencing. Upon reading the manuscript, Dhar soon concluded that the article was generated by AI and had somehow attached his name to the text.
