But correctly formatting references is pretty much a solved task through reference managers, possibly plus bibtex. It's a well-defined task, after all, and well suited to traditional software techniques. [1] If someone used an LLM to format the references, you would still have to go back through them.

If there is any use for LLMs in paper writing, I would think that it is for tedious but not well-defined tasks. For example, asking if an already written paper conforms to a journal's guidelines and style. I don't know about you, but I spend a meaningful amount of time [2] getting my papers into journal page limits. That involves rephrasing to trim overhangs, etc. "Rephrase the following paragraph to reduce the number of words by at least 2" is the kind of thing that LLMs really do seem to be able to do reliably.

1: As usual, the input data can be wrong, but that would be a problem for LLMs too. 2: I don't actually know how much time. It probably isn't all that long, but it's tedious and sure does feel like a long time while I'm doing it.

Re-phrasing to fit within word or character limits is certainly something I would pay for!

I have often spent more time doing this than writing the original draft, especially for grant applications...