Truly wild reading.
"If such a prompt injection is included in a submission and it consequently results in a positive LLM-generated review, we consider this a form of collusion (which, as per past precedent, is a Code of Ethics violation) that both the paper authors and the reviewer would be held accountable for, because it involves the author explicitly requesting and receiving a positive review.
https://blog.iclr.cc/2025/08/26/policies-on-large-language-model-usage-at-iclr-2026/
Why are they not just banning the use of LLMs to write a review from scratch? That is the real problem here.
I don't know this conference but I'll make sure never to submit there.
While it is the LLM that is “obliging” by providing the positive review, the reviewer is ultimately responsible for the LLM’s review, and consequently they would bear the consequences. On the other hand, we consider the injection of such a prompt by an author to be an attempt at collusion which would similarly be a code of ethics violation."
And you know they added this because someone actually did it and a reviewer who I presume was using an LLM to review, found this out.
No other community deserves whatever is happening more than the research community that brought this on us. What you unleashed coming back to eat its own.
"We note that in the extreme case where an LLM might be used to produce an entire piece of research, we still require a human author for accountability."
What's the point of submitting papers or singing up as a reviewer at these conferences? Why don't we just have LLM generated "papers" be met with LLM generated "reviews" and call it a day?
Only after the paper reaches its LLM-only readership...
(Sarcasm.)
But... colluding with whom? The definition of collusion is "two or more people do an illegal thing". They have to put forth that the LLM has personhood just to make this make sense.
**edit**
Apparently there aren't cover letters, wild. Every other submission process for ANYTHING I've gone through has cover letters.
Old included statement:
I've never professionally submitted a research paper, but there's presumably a cover letter? Where you talk up how great your paper is and how the magazine should publish it?
Suddenly that's "collusion", too, isn't it? If asking for a positive review is collusion, then the cover letter is, similarly, collusion.
When I say the research community, I mean this specific research community. ICLR was the home base of the OpenAIs and such. I remember when it was created and how so many of us didn't want to be near it because it was brocentral and sexism central.
Sadly, it's spread to other communities. I've given up reviewing papers because I don't have time to waste reading slop. And if a paper is slop, I have no way of knowing whether the reported experimental results are real numbers with some LLM-generated or LLM-assisted explanation or if they're just made up entirely. I don't know whether experimental methodology reflected what they actually did, or just statistically plausible text describing a methodology.
Are we now considering LLM as a contributor? Should I also consider my microscope as amaking a contribution?
This is absolutely crazy
In a very cynical way, I am assuming it's the same people who don't think that the actual person maintaining whatever infrastructure they use, don't contribute enough for authorship...
I have no faith in a conference or journal that would condone LLM usage in any way. We already have a review crisis but I'd rather papers be reviewed by a flip of a coin than this. Condoning it and punishing authors for exposing how easily manipulated it is is just totally unacceptable.
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