AI-assisted journal paper cites sources TorrentFreak could not find

A peer-reviewed paper on Z-Library in the New Review of Academic Librarianship cites a 2021 TorrentFreak article that TorrentFreak says it never published. Checking further, TorrentFreak had trouble finding at least ten of the paper's 44 references, including articles credited to real academics. The authors disclose using Consensus AI to sift literature and ChatGPT to improve the language. TorrentFreak says chatbots are known to invent plausible references, but that this does not prove AI wrote these ones. Publisher Taylor & Francis has referred the concerns to its editorial and publishing ethics and integrity teams. The Hacker News thread (46 comments) has no consensus. Most of it, 34 replies, grows from a comment wondering what would happen if TorrentFreak wrote a matching article, and turns into an argument over whether feeding bogus content to AI scrapers is fair or closer to sabotage. One top-level commenter says this happens all the time and that most humanities citations are not needed; a reply pushes back that citations are always mandatory. Two comments are practical: one says citation checks find invented sources but not "a real source cited for something it doesn't say", and another says invented reference lists are usually "too convenient", with every entry backing its sentence at the same strength. Sorted take: the fix is dull but works. Open every source an AI gives you, and check it says what your sentence claims, not just that it exists.