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Hauptverfasser: Iagaru, David, Gottschling, Nina M., Hansen, Anders C., Garnier, Josselin
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2026
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Online-Zugang:https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.13146
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author Iagaru, David
Gottschling, Nina M.
Hansen, Anders C.
Garnier, Josselin
author_facet Iagaru, David
Gottschling, Nina M.
Hansen, Anders C.
Garnier, Josselin
contents Artificial intelligence (AI) has transformed imaging inverse problems, from medical diagnostics to Earth observation. Yet deep neural networks can produce hallucinations, realistic-looking but incorrect details, undermining their reliability, especially when ground truth data is unavailable. We develop a theoretical framework showing that such hallucinations are not merely artifacts of particular models, but can arise from the ill-posed nature of the inverse problem itself. We derive necessary and sufficient conditions for hallucinations, together with computable bounds on their magnitude that depend only on the forward model. Building on this theory, we introduce algorithms to: (1) estimate the minimum hallucination magnitude achievable by any reconstruction model for a given input; (2) assess the faithfulness of reconstructed details by a given reconstruction model. Experiments across three imaging tasks demonstrate that our approach applies broadly, including to modern generative models, and provides a principled way to quantify and evaluate AI hallucinations.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_13146
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle On Hallucinations in Inverse Problems: Fundamental Limits and Provable Assessment Methods
Iagaru, David
Gottschling, Nina M.
Hansen, Anders C.
Garnier, Josselin
Machine Learning
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Artificial intelligence (AI) has transformed imaging inverse problems, from medical diagnostics to Earth observation. Yet deep neural networks can produce hallucinations, realistic-looking but incorrect details, undermining their reliability, especially when ground truth data is unavailable. We develop a theoretical framework showing that such hallucinations are not merely artifacts of particular models, but can arise from the ill-posed nature of the inverse problem itself. We derive necessary and sufficient conditions for hallucinations, together with computable bounds on their magnitude that depend only on the forward model. Building on this theory, we introduce algorithms to: (1) estimate the minimum hallucination magnitude achievable by any reconstruction model for a given input; (2) assess the faithfulness of reconstructed details by a given reconstruction model. Experiments across three imaging tasks demonstrate that our approach applies broadly, including to modern generative models, and provides a principled way to quantify and evaluate AI hallucinations.
title On Hallucinations in Inverse Problems: Fundamental Limits and Provable Assessment Methods
topic Machine Learning
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.13146