How can I spot made-up sources and facts from AI?
Facts as of October 10, 2026
In detail
A public database of court cases in which citations turned up that a model had made up shows how often this happens: 2,184 cases worldwide, eleven of them in Germany (accessed on October 10, 2026). And those are only the cases that were caught in court.
Three habits help:
- Step by step. Don't accept a finished result at the end; look at each intermediate step before the next one begins.
- Ask for evidence. Every factual claim needs a source that can be opened – or the label “assumption.” Then a gap is visible as a gap instead of being filled with whatever is plausible.
- Open it yourself. A fabricated reference often sits right among real ones, in the same list and in the same form. You won't recognize it from the list, only from the original.
A cross-check by a second AI catches some things the first one misses. It doesn't replace opening the source: a check can be set up wrong too, and a correction by the AI can be made up too. You'll find the right sentence for your instructions under How can I tell whether the AI has really done, saved or checked something?
In practice
In October 2026, while fact-checking a talk, a model “corrected” two price figures given by Thomas J. Weiss. The correction was itself wrong, because it confused net and gross. It sounded checked. It was only actually checked when someone opened the pricing page in their own account – he had been right.
As early as August 2026, while he was writing a play for his parish, another model had cited a source that couldn't be found, right next to two verifiable ones. Since then the project's chronicle lists this under what doesn't work: a fabricated reference among real ones, in the same form.
Sources
- AI Hallucination Cases Database by Damien Charlotin (accessed 10.10.2026)
- Note „Gefahren und Gegenmittel“, replicapong.de, 10.10.2026
- Prompt „Nichts behaupten, was du nicht geprüft hast“, replicapong.de, 10.10.2026
- Chronicle of a theater project, entry of 26.08.2026
Cite: Thomas J. Weiss: “How can I spot made-up sources and facts from AI?” replicapong.de, as of October 10, 2026. https://replicapong.de/en/question/fabricated-sources/ – CC BY 4.0