# ICML 2026 desk-rejected 497 papers after 795 reviews by reviewers who had agreed not to use LLMs were found to be LLM-generated

Page: https://flyvolo.ai/en/changes/ev-20260318-ai-researcher-7
Date: 2026-03-18 · Stage: Constraint
Can this record move a task judgement? yes
Occupation: https://flyvolo.ai/en/careers/ai-researcher

## Scope

One of the main machine-learning conferences, judging other people's results in peer review. Reviewers chose between a policy allowing no LLM use and one allowing LLMs only to help understand papers and polish reviews. The chairs report that 795 reviews (about 1% of all reviews) by 506 reviewers under the no-LLM policy were detected as LLM-generated, each flagged case checked by a person; those reviews were removed, and the 497 submissions of the 398 reciprocal reviewers among them were desk-rejected. It concerns peer review, not researchers reading their own results.

## Source

- ICML 2026 Program Chairs and Scientific Integrity Chair — 'On Violations of LLM Review Policies', ICML Blog (18 March 2026) — https://blog.icml.cc/2026/03/18/on-violations-of-llm-review-policies/ (primary source)

## What this means

The field enforces the rule that judging whether a result holds is a person's job, and its own count found 795 reviews under that rule, about 1% of all reviews, handed the judgement to a model anyway.

## What it does not show yet

One conference's review cycle; detection may miss cases, and it says nothing about how researchers interpret their own experiments.

## How to verify it yourself

Open the ICML Blog post 'On Violations of LLM Review Policies' and find "we desk-rejected 497 papers".


More: https://flyvolo.ai/llms.txt