A popular academic journal is coming down hard on AI-generated submissions

We’re only in the early stages of the AI ​​revolution, but there’s already plenty of evidence that it won’t just be a blessing. Generative AI has made writing exponentially faster, if not better, and the result has been a massive increase in document submissions. novels, pieces of newspaperand even academic journalswith a publication even warning of a coming “rubble swamp“.

But today, the newspapers are fighting back. ArXiv, one of the largest open access repositories of pre-publication academic research, places a one-year ban on all authors who submit “obviously AI-generated work.” according to 404media. Additionally, if the offending author wishes to return to ArXiv’s good graces, he or she will first have to submit to a “reputable peer review venue,” according to Thomas Dietterich, president of the publication’s IT division.

He recently taken at not only clarify the new rules, but also impose responsibility on authors to use LLMs responsibly: “If generative AI tools generate inappropriate language, plagiarized content, biased content, errors, incorrect references or misleading content, and these results are included in scientific work, this is the responsibility of the author(s). We have recently clarified our sanctions for this. If a submission contains compelling evidence that the authors did not verify the results of the LLM generation, this means that we cannot trust anything in the newspaper.

False and misleading references, plagiarism and fabricated citations are not the only problems with AI; however, there are others. In November 2025, ArXiv was forced to close its entire computer science review section due to the overwhelming volume of AI-generated submissions, most of which did not even introduce new search results, according to a press release.

A fun and counterintuitive consequence of the hyperefficiency enabled by AI is the evaluation bottleneck. If, in a given month, 100 academic articles are submitted for review, it’s not too difficult to find and publish the best work, but if there are a thousand submissions, even the best-funded journals can’t keep up.

Expect the backlash to grow even more pronounced as the power of AI increases and the costs of using it decrease.