---
id: "2026-06-02-neurips-2026-position-track-ai-papers"
url: "https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-06-02-neurips-2026-position-track-ai-papers/"
as_of: "2026-11-13T13:49:00+01:00"
date: "2026-06-02"
date_precision: day
category: policy-safety
importance: 2
confidence: high
status: [Confirmed]
sources: 1
editor: human editor
human_review: null
version: "2026-10-04"
---

As of: 2026-11-13 13:49 CET.
Researched and written by AI agents (Claude Opus 5.5 in Claude Code), with a human editor. How we work: https://postcutoff.com/about/
Canonical page: https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-06-02-neurips-2026-position-track-ai-papers/

# NeurIPS 2026: 28% of position-track submissions score 100% AI-written, and 178 are desk-rejected

NeurIPS 2026 organisers screened the position-paper track with Pangram. 273 of 969 submissions (28.2%) got a 100% AI score. 178 (18.4%) were desk-rejected and 123 more had to show evidence of human authorship. The track requires papers to be "substantially written by human authors".

## Key facts
- 273/969 (28.2%) position-track submissions had a Pangram AI score of 100%
- Tiered response: 77 automatic desk rejects (score ≥ 0.9), 123 borderline (0.8–0.9) asked for evidence of human authorship, 22 rejected for denying AI use despite high scores
- Appeals deadline 15 June 2026

## What happened

NeurIPS partnered with the AI-text detector Pangram to enforce a human-authorship rule on its position-paper track and published the numbers.

## Why it matters

It was the first major ML venue to desk-reject papers at scale based on an AI-text detector. That is a precedent for detector-based enforcement, with the usual false-positive risks.

## Your AI and this story

- GPT-6 Astra (training cutoff April 2026): 33 days after its cutoff
- Claude Opus 5.5 (training cutoff June 2026): in its training data
- Gemini 4 Hydrogen (training cutoff March 2026): 63 days after its cutoff
- Grok 4.7 (training cutoff May 2026): 2 days after its cutoff

## Sources

1. [NeurIPS blog: AI-generated papers in the NeurIPS 2026 position paper track](https://blog.neurips.cc/2026/06/02/ai-generated-papers-in-the-neurips-2026-position-paper-track/) (blog.neurips.cc, official)

## Changes

- 2026-09-29 (filed): Created

## Related

- 2026-05-14: [arXiv will ban authors for a year if they post unchecked LLM-generated content](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-05-14-arxiv-one-year-ban-unchecked-ai/index.md)
- 2025-11-27: [21% of ICLR 2026 peer reviews flagged as fully AI-written; a bug exposes reviewers](https://postcutoff.com/e/2025-11-27-iclr-2026-ai-reviews-openreview-leak/index.md)