AI Hallucination
Hallucination — A hallucination is when an AI model states something false or fabricated with confidence — inventing a fact, a source, or a business detail that isn't real.
Hallucinations matter to businesses in two ways. First, a model can get your details wrong — misstate your hours, services, or location — steering customers off. Second, it can invent or wrongly frame competitors. Both are reasons to watch what assistants actually say about you.
Grounding and retrieval reduce hallucination by tying answers to sources, which is another reason consistent, correct information about your business across the web is worth the effort: it gives the model accurate material to ground on and less room to guess.
Key points
- →Confident but false model output.
- →Can misstate your business facts or invent rivals.
- →Accurate, consistent public info is the best defense.
Related terms
See your own AI visibility
Run a free scan and see how ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini & Perplexity describe your business — with a plan to get named more often.
Run my free scan →