Especially for your first NeurIPS paper as a PhD student, getting one published is extremely lucrative.

Most big tech PhD intern job postings have NeurIPS/ICML/ICLR/etc. first author paper as a de facto requirement to be considered. It's like getting your SAG card.

If you get one of these internships, it effectively doubles or triples your salary that year right away. You will make more in that summer than your PhD stipend. Plus you can now apply in future summers and the jobs will be easier to get. And it sets your career on a good path.

A conservative estimate of the discounted cash value of a student's first NeurIPS paper would certainly be five figures. It's potentially much higher depending on how you think about it, considering potential path dependent impacts on future career opportunities.

We should not be surprised to see cheating. Nonetheless, it's really bad for science that these attempts get through. I also expect some people did make legitimate mistakes letting AI touch their .bib.