Research AI for Fact-Checking

What the citation tests found

The Tow Center at Columbia Journalism Review tested eight generative search tools on excerpts from 20 news publishers, with 1,600 queries in total. The tools gave wrong answers to more than 60 percent of queries. Several fabricated links or pointed to syndicated copies rather than the original article. Premium versions were often more confidently wrong than free ones (cjr.org).

Those results describe news citation tasks from 2025, not every product today. Still, they show that a clean-looking citation can hide a wrong claim. The lesson is practical. A tool that cites a page has not necessarily checked the page, so every citation needs your own read before it reaches a reader.

A fact-check workflow

Ask the tool to list each claim separately, then request the source URL and the exact sentence that supports it. Open every link. Look for the claim in the page text, not only in the headline. Check the date, because an old page can support an outdated figure.

Hyperresearch is our editorial pick for this kind of checking because it states that it checks every cited figure against its source before a report ships. Still, a fact check should end with a human reading the original document. Keep a record of what you checked, which page you read and the date you read it. If a correction appears later, that record shows exactly what you verified and when.

Watch for numbers that look precise but lack a clear unit. Check whether a percentage refers to a share of a population or a change over time. Many errors come from that mix-up, and a tool will not always flag it. Write the unit beside each figure in your notes.

When to stop and escalate

Stop when a claim rests on a single source, when the source is a secondary summary, or when the tool cannot find the original. Those cases need a primary record, such as a filing, a statute, a dataset or the original study. When you cannot find a primary record, say so in the piece rather than presenting the claim as settled. Readers can handle an open question much better than a confident claim that later falls apart. Say what would settle it.

Checklist

• Split the article into individual claims before you start.
• Ask the tool for a source URL and the exact supporting sentence for each claim.
• Open every cited link and find the sentence on the page.
• Check the publication date and the unit of every figure.
• Escalate any claim that rests on one secondary source.

Questions & answers

Sources for this entry

• Columbia Journalism Review: Tow Center AI search citation study
• Nieman Lab: AI search engines fail to produce accurate citations
• Google Blog: NotebookLM fact-check update

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