Trust & truth · sources
AI citations
30-second gist~30s read
An AI that can't actually look things up will sometimes invent its sources. The format looks correct — author, title, year, journal — but the cited paper, court case, or web page doesn't exist.
The fix is the easiest habit in this whole guide: click the citation. If it doesn't go anywhere, the citation isn't real.
If you want more
How to verify a citation in 10 seconds
- Click it. If it 404s, it's likely fake.
- Search the title in quotes. If only AI-shaped sites repeat it, treat it as fake.
- Look up the author's actual list of work. Real authors have public bibliographies. If the title doesn't appear there, fake.
- For court cases, search the docket number directly. Real cases are in public records (PACER in the US, Find Case in NZ, etc.).
AI tools that do have live web access (Perplexity, ChatGPT search, Gemini grounded mode) cite real pages much more reliably — but you should still click them. Citations have been wrong-but-real-looking for the entire history of search.