2026-09-20T23:22:28.549Z
- publishedAt:
Not provided→ 2025-02-10T00:00:00.000Z
SOURCE-LINKED INTELLIGENCE
Reported Emergence of 'Vegetative Electron Microscopy' in Scientific Papers Traced to Purported AI Training Data Contamination
Researchers reportedly traced the appearance of the nonsensical phrase "vegetative electron microscopy" in scientific papers to contamination in AI training data. Testing indicated that large language models such as GPT-3, GPT-4, and Claude 3.5 may reproduce the term. The error allegedly originated from a digitization mistake that merged unrelated words during scanning, and a later translation error between Farsi and English.
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- recordType
- incident-report
- evidenceStatus
- reported
- region
- Global
Reported occurrence date: 2025-04-15T00:00:00.000Z
Evidence & attribution
- AI Incident Database
- AI Incident Database · 2025-02-10T00:00:00.000Z
AI Incident Database, Responsible AI Collaborative; McGregor (2021), Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents. Incident-specific contributor credits are available at each citation link. Metadata adapted; article text excluded.
License: CC BY-SA 4.0
First collected: 2026-09-19T22:50:59.123Z. This is not the publication date.
Observed changes
AIIC observation times, not verified publisher revision times. Up to eight recent revisions.