AI Slop

Recently, I reviewed a paper for a top journal in my field and found the following references

Despite being an AI-generated garbage paper, it evidently passed the checks of both the EIC and AE before it was sent out for review. I imagine all journals are flooded with these kinds of papers. This poses a serious issue to the current model of most journals, since it floods the review system and makes the paper processing times increase exponentially. In my review I recommended the editor to ban the authors and I think journals need to enforce strict policies against such papers.