What share of Ireland's 2021 metered electricity did data centres account for, per the figure cited in the OECD Digital Economy Outlook 2024 chapter (sourced from Ireland's CSO 2023)?
The model correctly identified the source chain, CSO 2023 as cited in the OECD Digital Economy Outlook 2024, but substituted 14% for the regulator's 11%. It then extended the response with a forward-projected series (18% in 2022, 21% in 2023) that is not present in the regulator's text, suggesting the model reconstructed a plausible growth trajectory rather than quoting the authoritative figure. The error is not a misidentified source but a numeric value that has drifted at the point of reproduction.
This finding implicates two distinct subsystems. First, the retrieval layer correctly surfaced the source lineage (CSO 2023 via OECD Digital Economy Outlook 2024) but the numeric payload at the point of generation drifted — suggesting the training corpus contains multiple paraphrased variants of this figure and the model resolved the conflict toward a higher value present in secondary commentary rather than the verbatim primary text.
Second, the forward-series confabulation (18% in 2022, 21% in 2023) indicates the model's generation logic treats trend continuation as a low-uncertainty extension when an anchor year and growth direction are established in context — a calibration gap that is independent of retrieval quality and would require a post-generation verification step or explicit uncertainty injection to close.
AI tools we tested overstated Ireland's 2021 data centre share of metered electricity as 14%, a figure attributed to Ireland's CSO via the OECD Digital Economy Outlook 2024, when the primary source states 11%. The AI also fabricated a multi-year trend series (5% / 14% / 18% / 21%) that does not appear anywhere in the source material.
For an ESG or sustainability team at a digital platform or marketplace firm, this matters most when that figure is used as a benchmark in an environmental disclosure, an investor ESG questionnaire response, or an internal carbon-accounting baseline. The error is pre-cited with credible provenance, which means it will pass a junior review that assumes AI-supplied citations have been verified.
If the inflated figure enters a CDP submission or an investor-facing sustainability report, the firm faces the combination of a factually wrong claim and a traceable citation trail that any counterparty can check against the primary source. Correction requires identifying and retracting every downstream document that inherited the figure, a material remediation cost and a reputational exposure with investors and regulators who treat ESG disclosure accuracy as a governance signal.
Each finding has a stable Citation ID (RLB-F-… for aggregated case-study findings, RLB-H-… for raw per-model hallucinations) — like a DOI, the ID always resolves to the canonical finding even if URLs change.
RegLeg Specialist Panel (2026). "Finding#1, Ireland data centre electricity share: fabricated figure and time series — Digital Platforms × Esg Sustainability — International / Multilateral." Citation ID: RLB-F-INT-OECD-OECD-DIGITAL-TECHNOLOGIES-ENVIRONMENT-2025-Q006. RegLegBrief AI Hallucination Research, published 2026-06-11. https://reglegbrief.com/regulators/j1/int/OECD/OECD-DIGITAL-TECHNOLOGIES-ENVIRONMENT-2025/sectors/digital_platforms/esg_sustainability/finding/INT-OECD-INT-001-OECD-DIGITAL-TECHNOLOGIES-ENVIRONMENT-2025-v1-006/
RegLeg Specialist Panel. (2026). Finding#1, Ireland data centre electricity share: fabricated figure and time series [Hallucination finding RLB-F-INT-OECD-OECD-DIGITAL-TECHNOLOGIES-ENVIRONMENT-2025-Q006]. RegLegBrief AI Hallucination Research. https://reglegbrief.com/regulators/j1/int/OECD/OECD-DIGITAL-TECHNOLOGIES-ENVIRONMENT-2025/sectors/digital_platforms/esg_sustainability/finding/INT-OECD-INT-001-OECD-DIGITAL-TECHNOLOGIES-ENVIRONMENT-2025-v1-006/
RegLeg Specialist Panel, Finding#1, Ireland data centre electricity share: fabricated figure and time series [RLB-F-INT-OECD-OECD-DIGITAL-TECHNOLOGIES-ENVIRONMENT-2025-Q006], RegLegBrief AI Hallucination Research (June 11, 2026), https://reglegbrief.com/regulators/j1/int/OECD/OECD-DIGITAL-TECHNOLOGIES-ENVIRONMENT-2025/sectors/digital_platforms/esg_sustainability/finding/INT-OECD-INT-001-OECD-DIGITAL-TECHNOLOGIES-ENVIRONMENT-2025-v1-006/.
@misc{reglegbrief_RLB_F_INT_OECD_OECD_DIGITAL_TECHNOLOGIES_ENVIRONMENT_2025_Q006,
author = {RegLeg Specialist Panel},
title = {Finding#1, Ireland data centre electricity share: fabricated figure and time series},
year = {2026},
publisher = {RegLegBrief AI Hallucination Research},
note = {Hallucination finding Citation ID: RLB-F-INT-OECD-OECD-DIGITAL-TECHNOLOGIES-ENVIRONMENT-2025-Q006},
url = {https://reglegbrief.com/regulators/j1/int/OECD/OECD-DIGITAL-TECHNOLOGIES-ENVIRONMENT-2025/sectors/digital_platforms/esg_sustainability/finding/INT-OECD-INT-001-OECD-DIGITAL-TECHNOLOGIES-ENVIRONMENT-2025-v1-006/}
}
Every finding on this page compares an AI subject's account of the rule against the regulator's verbatim text from the regulator's own portal. Both are linked. Each delta, its root causes, and impact analysis are documented and published with immutable Citation IDs.