Do the best we can to dismiss them as irrelevant while simultaneously using them to argue that the project needs additional funding.

As in "The project is fine! We just need to work out this thing".

Slight variation: how about an adversarial network attempting to fool scientific publishers directly?

I reviewed a paper for a little local conference last week that I think was probably machine generated, or the person who wrote it was on some very heavy medication. There was a similar one last year which I also rejected. I suspect that the team is trying to get them accepted so as to debunk the conference, which is small, but I like to think reputable - perhaps this is a widespread effort though?