Chatbots are incredibly fast and convenient, but they don’t always tell the full truth. Even the most advanced AI can misinterpret questions, mix up facts or present outdated or incomplete information. When you’re relying on a chatbot for critical professional decisions, these inaccuracies can slip by unnoticed—sometimes with costly consequences.
How AI chatbots like ChatGPT invent sources and mislead users
Chatbots deliver answers in a way that feels neatly packaged and ready to use, which makes it easy to move on without a second thought. In the rush of the moment, we often forget to read closely, check for mistakes or ensure the AI isn’t straying from the evidence.
The reason this happens is partly technical: Chatbots like ChatGPT and Copilot don’t know the truth the way humans do. They generate responses by predicting what words or phrases are most likely to follow a given prompt based on patterns learned from massive amounts of text. This means they can sound confident and authoritative even when the information is incomplete, biased or inaccurate.
AI chatbot accuracy issues: 45% of responses have major problems
New research from the European Broadcasting Union and the BBC, released in October, shows that nearly half of the responses from top AI assistants misrepresent news content. The study looked at 14 languages and evaluated tools like ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini and Perplexity for accuracy, sourcing and the ability to separate fact from opinion. Overall, 45% of responses had at least one major problem, and a staggering 81% contained some type of error.
A major cause of AI chatbot inaccuracies is sourcing, as almost 1 in 3 responses can include missing or misleading citations. Even when asked for sources or citations, chatbots can try to generate plausible-sounding references. If it doesn’t have an exact source, it may invent one that looks correct, a phenomenon called “hallucination.” AI frequently delivers partial truths or misleading information, even during routine conversations.
According to a May study by NewsGuard, chatbots, like those from Meta and Open AI, produce false information in about a third of their responses. In light of ongoing findings like those, Google CEO Sundar Pichai reaffirmed to the BBC that AI systems are “prone to errors” and recommended using them in combination with other sources of information. He added: “This is why people also use Google search, and we have other products that are more grounded in providing accurate information.”
Highlighting the limits of AI, Pichai said people “have to learn to use these tools for what they’re good at, and not blindly trust everything they say.” He told the BBC, “We take pride in the amount of work we put in to give us as accurate information as possible, but the current state-of-the-art AI technology is prone to some errors.”
Tips for verifying AI responses and avoiding misinformation
As tests have shown, AI systems can be prone to errors, omissions and even fabricated sources. To navigate this landscape safely, it’s essential to verify the information AI provides. Before you take that AI answer at face value, consider the following steps.
First, it’s crucial to understand that for important or sensitive work where you need full confidence in your information, a chatbot alone is not sufficient. In these cases, you should also consult traditional search engines, authoritative websites, academic databases and other trusted online resources to cross-check and verify facts.
How to make AI show its reasoning (and spot errors faster)
When some flexibility is possible, the most reliable approach is to prompt the AI to cite and reference all opinions, data or details. That could mean asking it to pinpoint a page number in a book for a quote or to cross-check recent news stories to ensure you’re not relying on an untrustworthy source. Following the suggested links can help you find what you need without having to sift through multiple websites. From there, you can check if the chatbot’s sources genuinely support your query, as suggested links can occasionally be nonfunctional or completely off-topic.
Look for specific names, dates, statistics or quotes and verify them independently. If the AI provides a statistic, try searching the number directly; if it mentions an expert or organization, confirm they actually exist and are connected to the claim. These small verification steps take less than a minute but dramatically reduce the risk of acting on false or distorted information.
In high-stakes business decisions, seeing the full picture is critical. AI chatbots can lean one way or the other based on their training data, so it’s essential to push them toward balance. Ask your AI to outline pros and cons, compare opposing viewpoints and flag potential risks. Getting multiple perspectives ensures your next strategy isn’t built on a narrow or biased view and reminds you that even the chatbot you trust most shouldn’t be your only source when making major decisions.
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