This should be okay to do. Understanding and being able to process information is foundational

I wouldn't call "professional cheaters" to the students that carefully proofread the output. People using chatgpt and proofreading content and bibliography later are using it as a tool, like any other (Wikipedia, related papers...), so they are not cheating. This hack is intended for the real cheaters, the ones that feed chatgpt with the assignment and return whatever hallucination it gives to you without checking anything else.

I've worked as tutor, I know those little idiots ain't proofing a got-damn thing

They can. There was that court case where the cases cited were made up by chatgpt. Upon investigation it was discovered it was all hallucinated by chatgpt and the lawyer got into deep crap

LLMs can't cite. They don't know what a citation is other than a collection of text of a specific style

LLMs can cite. It's called Retrival-Augmented Generation. Basically LLM that can do Information Retrival, which is just academic term for search engines.

You'd be lucky if the number of references equalled the number of referenced items even if you were lucky enough to get real sources out of an LLM

You can just print retrival logs into references. Well, kinda stretching definition of "just".

Let's give that a try, this is classic model, no retrieval

Chatgpt how deadly is covid19, two paragraph answer, include citations

COVID-19 varies in severity, with mortality rates heavily influenced by factors such as age, underlying health conditions, and access to healthcare. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates a global case fatality rate (CFR) of around 1-3%, though this can be much higher among older adults and immunocompromised individuals (WHO, 2023). In comparison to seasonal influenza, COVID-19 has a higher mortality rate, particularly during the initial outbreaks before widespread vaccination. Long-term complications, often referred to as "long COVID," further increase the disease's burden beyond acute infection (NIH, 2022).

Vaccination efforts, antiviral treatments, and improved healthcare protocols have reduced mortality rates over time, especially in developed countries (CDC, 2023). However, variants of concern, such as Delta and Omicron, have shown differing degrees of transmissibility and immune escape, complicating pandemic management. Even with lowered death rates in certain populations, COVID-19 remains a significant public health threat, particularly in areas with low vaccination coverage or overstretched healthcare systems (Johns Hopkins University, 2023).

References:

World Health Organization (WHO). (2023). COVID-19 Mortality Update.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). (2023). Impact of Vaccines on COVID-19 Severity.

National Institutes of Health (NIH). (2022). Long COVID and Post-Acute Sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 Infection.

Johns Hopkins University. (2023). COVID-19 Global Trends and Variants.

Duckduckgos llm cites it's sources. I've seen screenshots of googles llm doing the same.

You're basing your entire comment on made up nonsense, that hilariously might as well be a llm result.