SAP Integration Suite Splitter will get this error when there is a subsequent API call be for the associated gather for the splitter.
Reason: The gather expects XML but the result of the API call is JSON, hence the error.
Solution 1: use and JSON -> XML converter after the API call
Solution 2: modify your gather to use a different aggregation strategy in the Gather module as follows:
Incoming Format: Plain Text
Aggregation Algorithm: Concatenate