{"schema":"postcutoff/event@1","as_of":"2026-11-13T13:49:00+01:00","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2025-11-27-iclr-2026-ai-reviews-openreview-leak/","md":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2025-11-27-iclr-2026-ai-reviews-openreview-leak/index.md","disclosure":{"written_by":"AI agents (Claude Opus 5.5 in Claude Code)","editor":"human editor","policy":"https://postcutoff.com/about/"},"license":null,"id":"2025-11-27-iclr-2026-ai-reviews-openreview-leak","date":"2025-11-27","date_precision":"day","short_title":"21% of ICLR 2026 peer reviews flagged as fully AI-written; a bug exposes reviewers","deck":null,"takeaway":"In late November 2025 Pangram Labs screened all ~19,490 submissions and ~75,800 reviews for ICLR 2026.","category":"policy-safety","category_label":"Policy & safety","importance":3,"confidence":"high","status":{"key":"confirmed","labels":["Confirmed"]},"sources":[{"n":1,"title":"Pangram: Pangram predicts 21% of ICLR reviews are AI-generated","url":"https://www.pangram.com/blog/pangram-predicts-21-of-iclr-reviews-are-ai-generated","type":"official","group":"primary","domain":"pangram.com"},{"n":2,"title":"ICLR Blog: ICLR 2026 Response to Security Incident (3 Dec 2025)","url":"https://blog.iclr.cc/2025/12/03/iclr-2026-response-to-security-incident/","type":"official","group":"primary","domain":"blog.iclr.cc"},{"n":3,"title":"Nature: Major AI conference flooded with peer reviews written fully by AI","url":"https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03506-6","type":"press","group":"press","domain":"nature.com"},{"n":4,"title":"Science: Hack reveals reviewer identities for huge AI conference","url":"https://www.science.org/content/article/hack-reveals-reviewer-identities-huge-ai-conference","type":"press","group":"press","domain":"science.org"}],"official":2,"filed":"2026-09-29","updated":"2026-09-29","orgs":["ICLR","OpenReview","Pangram Labs"],"title":"ICLR 2026 review crisis: 21% of peer reviews flagged fully AI-written, and an OpenReview bug exposes reviewer identities","summary":"In late November 2025 Pangram Labs screened all ~19,490 submissions and ~75,800 reviews for ICLR 2026. It found 21% of the reviews were fully AI-generated and more than half showed some AI use, as Nature reported. On 27 Nov 2025 an OpenReview API bug exposed the author, reviewer and area-chair identities of 10,000+ ICLR papers (~45%). ICLR reverted reviews, reassigned area chairs and desk-rejected papers involved in collusion attempts.","key_facts":["Pangram: 15,899 of ~75,800 reviews (21%) classified fully AI-generated; >50% with some AI involvement","Submissions: several hundred papers flagged fully AI-generated; 9% had over 50% AI content (Pangram)","Pattern: AI-written reviews tended to give higher scores; papers with more AI text got lower scores","OpenReview API vulnerability reported and patched 27 Nov 2025; identities for 'over ten thousand' papers (45% of ICLR 2026) leaked","Leaked data was used to harass and try to bribe reviewers; ICLR froze discussions, reverted reviews to their pre-breach state (28 Nov), reassigned ACs, banned the distributor and desk-rejected papers tied to collusion"],"key_numbers":[],"tags":["peer-review","research-integrity","ai-generated-text","conferences","security-incident"],"science":null,"body_md":"## What happened\n\nICLR 2026 authors complained publicly about hallucinated citations and vague, padded reviews. Pangram Labs ran its detector over the whole conference and published the 21% figure, which Nature covered. In the same week a bug in the OpenReview API let anyone pull the hidden author and reviewer names for about 45% of submissions. The scraped dataset spread before it was taken down, and ICLR had to partly restart its review process.\n\n## Why it matters\n\nIt was the clearest sign yet that LLMs had overwhelmed the peer-review system of the field that builds them. It pushed conferences and arXiv toward AI-detection and accountability rules in 2026.","disputed":[],"related":[{"id":"2026-06-02-neurips-2026-position-track-ai-papers","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-06-02-neurips-2026-position-track-ai-papers/","date":"2026-06-02","date_precision":"day","short_title":"NeurIPS 2026: 28% of position-track submissions score 100% AI-written, and 178 are desk-rejected","deck":null,"takeaway":"It was the first major ML venue to desk-reject papers at scale based on an AI-text detector.","category":"policy-safety","category_label":"Policy & safety","importance":2,"confidence":"high","status":{"key":"confirmed","labels":["Confirmed"]},"sources":1,"official":1,"filed":"2026-09-29","updated":"2026-09-29","orgs":["NeurIPS","Pangram Labs"]},{"id":"2026-05-14-arxiv-one-year-ban-unchecked-ai","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-05-14-arxiv-one-year-ban-unchecked-ai/","date":"2026-05-14","date_precision":"day","short_title":"arXiv will ban authors for a year if they post unchecked LLM-generated content","deck":null,"takeaway":"arXiv is the main distribution channel for AI and math research.","category":"policy-safety","category_label":"Policy & safety","importance":3,"confidence":"high","status":{"key":"confirmed","labels":["Confirmed"]},"sources":3,"official":1,"filed":"2026-09-29","updated":"2026-10-29","orgs":["arXiv"]},{"id":"2025-03-12-sakana-ai-scientist-v2-peer-review","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2025-03-12-sakana-ai-scientist-v2-peer-review/","date":"2025-03-12","date_precision":"day","short_title":"Sakana's AI Scientist-v2 writes the first fully AI-generated paper to pass peer review","deck":null,"takeaway":"It was the first demonstration that a fully automated pipeline could clear human peer review, even at a workshop with a higher acceptance rate than main tracks.","category":"science","category_label":"Science & math","importance":4,"confidence":"high","status":{"key":"confirmed","labels":["Result confirmed"]},"sources":4,"official":3,"filed":"2026-09-29","updated":"2026-09-29","orgs":["Sakana AI","University of British Columbia","University of Oxford"]}],"people":[],"posts":[],"videos":[],"models":[],"changes":[{"date":"2026-09-29","type":"filed","text":"Created"}],"provenance":{"agents":[{"model":"Claude Opus 5.5","maker":"Anthropic","tool":"Claude Code"}],"filed":"2026-09-29","run":null,"sources_read":null,"updated":"2026-09-29","human_review":null,"version":{"date":"2026-10-07"}},"gaps":[{"model_id":"gpt-6-astra","name":"GPT-6 Astra","cutoff":"2026-04","days_after":null,"in_training_data":true},{"model_id":"claude-opus-5-5","name":"Claude Opus 5.5","cutoff":"2026-06","days_after":null,"in_training_data":true},{"model_id":"gemini-4-hydrogen","name":"Gemini 4 Hydrogen","cutoff":"2026-03","days_after":null,"in_training_data":true},{"model_id":"grok-4-7","name":"Grok 4.7","cutoff":"2026-05","days_after":null,"in_training_data":true}],"short_url":null}