OpenAI's New Scientific Writing And Collaboration Workspace 'Prism' Raises Fears Of Vibe-Coded Academic AISlop

[littlemissmartypants]

From the beyond-hallucitations dept
Wed, Feb 4th 2026 01:32pm - Glyn Moody

It is no secret that large language models (LLMs) are being used routinely to modify and even write scientific papers. That’s not necessarily a bad thing: LLMs can help produce clearer texts with stronger logic, not least when researchers are writing in a language that is not their mother tongue. More generally, a recent analysis in Nature magazine, reported by Science magazine, found that scientists embracing AI — of any kind — “consistently make the biggest professional strides”:

AI adopters have published three times more papers, received five times more citations, and reach leadership roles faster than their AI-free peers.

But there is also a downside:
Not only is AI-driven work prone to circling the same crowded problems, but it also leads to a less interconnected scientific literature, with fewer studies engaging with and building on one another.

Another issue with LLMs, that of “hallucinated citations,” or “HalluCitations,” ...snip...

Fake publications generated using LLMs are often obvious because of their lack of sophistication and polish. But a new service from OpenAI, called Prism, is likely to eliminate such easy-to-spot signs, by adding AI support to every aspect of writing a scientific paper:

Prism is a free workspace for scientific writing and collaboration...snip

https://www.techdirt.com/2026/02/04/openais-new-scientific-writing-and-collaboration-workspace-prism-raises-fears-of-vibe-coded-academic-ai-slop/