AI’s false information rate has almost doubled to 35% from18 % in the past year, according to an audit by news rating tool NewsGuard.
Ten of the top AI tools were repeatedly providing false information, when prompted about news topics, more than one-third of the time.
The highest rate of false information came from Inflection’s Pi (56.67%) and Perplexity (46.67%). Anthropic’s Claude (10%) and Google’s Gemini (16.67%) produced the lowest.
The competitive nature of AI tools to answer all enquiries and with quick response times is said to be the leading cause of false information.
AI training also plays a significant role. AI platforms out-source answers from "low-engagement websites, social media posts, and AI-generated content farms," failing to tell the difference between this and credible sources.
“Instead of citing data cutoffs or refusing to weigh in on sensitive topics, the LLMs now pull from a polluted online information ecosystem — sometimes deliberately seeded by vast networks of malign actors, including Russian disinformation operations — and treat unreliable sources as credible,” said NewsGuard.
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