The draft says the right things, but the supplier is named wrongly, the total is off, or the deadline is a month early. Small details fail first, and they're the ones that cost money.
Why details go wrong
Researchers at OpenAI asked a widely used chatbot for the birthday of one of the paper's authors. It gave three different dates, likewise all wrong.1 Their explanation is that arbitrary facts like a birthday cannot be predicted from patterns alone.1
Business details are often just like that. A supplier's registered name, a staff member's title or a company's founding date follows no pattern the tool can lean on.
Names
People, firms, products, streets and suburbs. A wrong name is embarrassing in a customer email and worse in a contract.
- Check the spelling against the person's or firm's own website, email signature or official register.
- Check the role or title against where it's published, such as a staff page.
- Take extra care with names that look alike, such as two firms with similar trading names.
If the name belongs to a customer, use your own records and not the AI's version.
Numbers
Prices, totals, percentages, measurements and counts. The Australian privacy regulator uses a simple counting question as a warning. Asked for the "b"s in "banana", a model without protective measures will generally answer two or three.2
- As our own tip, redo any sum yourself or in a spreadsheet rather than trusting a total the tool wrote.
- Check each price at the seller's own page, and note the currency and the date you checked it. A price in US dollars is not a price in Australian dollars or pounds.
- Check units. Litres, gallons, kilometres and miles can be mixed up, and so can weekly and yearly figures.
- Ask where any statistic came from. If there's no source you can open, don't use it.
Dates and deadlines
A deadline is a promise to a customer or an authority, so it needs more care than most.
A tribunal case shows how it can go wrong. A chatbot on an airline's site gave a grieving customer a 90-day window for a partial refund. Another page on the same site said such fares couldn't be applied after the flight had been taken.3 The time limit didn't match the policy.
- Check any date against the original notice, contract, calendar or official page.
- Check the year, so you know you're not looking at last year's version.
- Check which country the rule belongs to. Tax dates, notice periods and holidays differ between Australia, the United States and the UK, and often between states or regions.
- For deadlines set by law or a regulator, go to the official body. Names to know: the ATO and OAIC in Australia, the IRS and FTC in the US, and HMRC and the ICO in the UK. This site gives general information only and isn't legal advice.
Old information
A tool's training data stops at some date, and the regulator says it eventually becomes outdated.2 If the answer is about "current" prices, rates, software features or rules, assume it might be stale until you've seen today's version.
A short routine
- Circle each name, number and date in the draft.
- Open the source record for each, in another tab.
- Match them letter for letter and digit for digit.
- Write the check date next to any price or figure you keep.
The wider routine is in the step-by-step guide. Sources and quotes get their own page, on how to test a citation.
Where the facts come from
- Why language models hallucinate, OpenAI
- Guidance on privacy and the use of commercially available AI products, Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC)
- Moffatt v. Air Canada, Wikipedia
Keep checking
Why AI Makes Things UpWhy an AI tool can state a wrong answer with total confidence, what causes it, and what that means for checking its work.
Common Kinds of AI MistakesWhat AI errors look like in everyday business writing and answers, with real examples, so you know what to look for.
How to Check an AI Answer Step by StepA simple routine for catching AI slips before you use an answer, from marking claims to confirming them at the source.