Hallucination

What is Hallucination?

A hallucination is a claim an AI states as fact that isn't true: an invented detail, a citation that doesn't exist, a feature a product doesn't have. It's not a rare glitch or a coding bug, it's a consequence of how a language model works, generating plausible text without independently verifying anything. Grounding answers in real sources reduces the problem but doesn't eliminate it. For a brand, it matters because an engine can describe it inaccurately, and that's also something worth measuring.

Related terms

LLM

The type of program behind ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, or Claude.

Grounding

Tying an AI's answer to specific, checkable documents.

Source

Each page an answer engine retrieved and used to write its answer.

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