How to Fact-Check AI-Written Content
AI assistants can state false information with complete confidence. A practical process for catching errors before they reach your customers.
Why AI content needs checking
AI language models generate text by predicting what is likely to come next. That makes them fluent, but it also means they can produce statements that sound correct and are not. This is often called "hallucination": invented facts, wrong numbers, non-existent sources, outdated information or confident answers to questions they cannot actually know.
For a business website, errors are not just embarrassing. A wrong price, an invented guarantee or an inaccurate health or legal statement can mislead customers, create obligations you did not intend, or break advertising rules. You are responsible for what you publish, whoever drafted it.
Where errors are most likely
- Numbers: statistics, percentages, prices, dates, measurements and counts.
- Sources: named studies, quotes and references, which may not exist or may say something different.
- Your business details: founding dates, years of experience, certifications, team names and service areas the assistant filled in.
- Rules and regulations: legal requirements, deadlines, licensing and tax rules, which vary by place and change over time.
- Health and safety: medical claims, product safety, allergens.
- Recent events and prices: anything that may have changed since the model's information was gathered.
- Other companies: claims about competitors, partners or products.
A practical checking process
1. Extract the claims
Do not try to check while reading for flow. First, make a list of every factual claim. You can ask an assistant to do this: "List every factual claim in this text, including numbers, dates, comparisons, guarantees and statements about laws, without rewriting anything." Our editing prompts include this prompt.
2. Sort them
Put each claim into one of three groups:
- Your business facts, which you can confirm from your own knowledge and records.
- External facts, which need a reliable source.
- Opinions or general statements, which need no source but must not be misleading.
3. Check external facts against primary sources
Use the original source wherever possible: a government website for rules and fees, the manufacturer for product specifications, the official study for research findings. Avoid checking an AI claim against another AI answer or a page that may itself have been generated without checking.
4. Remove what you cannot verify
If you cannot find a reliable source quickly, cut the claim or rewrite it so it no longer depends on the fact. Most pages lose nothing important when an unverifiable statistic is removed.
5. Get expert review where it matters
Legal, medical, financial and safety content should be reviewed by a qualified professional before publication. AI drafts can be a helpful starting point for them, but they are not a substitute for their review.
If you cannot verify a claim in a few minutes, the safest edit is usually to delete it.
Prevent errors in the prompt
You can reduce errors before they appear:
- Provide the facts yourself, and tell the assistant to use only those facts.
- Instruct it to mark missing information as [NEEDS DETAIL] instead of guessing.
- Ask it to flag any statement it is unsure about.
- Avoid asking for statistics unless you give it the data.
Every prompt in our library includes instructions like these.
If an assistant gives you sources
Some AI tools can search the web and cite pages. Citations are helpful, but still check them: open the source and confirm it says what the assistant claims. Assistants sometimes summarize a source inaccurately or attach a citation to a statement the source does not support. Without web access, a model may produce references that look real but do not exist.
Watch for outdated information
AI models are trained on information gathered up to a certain point, and may not know about recent changes to prices, rules, products or events. Be especially careful with anything time-sensitive, such as fees, regulations, software features and current events. When in doubt, check the official source and add the date you checked to your own notes.
Keep a simple record
For important pages, keep a short note of the claims you checked, the sources you used and the date. It makes future updates quicker and helps if a customer ever questions something on your site.
Fact-check checklist
- All numbers checked against a reliable source or your records
- Every named source opened and confirmed
- Business details confirmed by someone who knows
- Legal, medical and financial statements reviewed by a professional
- Time-sensitive information confirmed as current
- Unverifiable claims removed
A worked example
Suppose an AI draft for a roofing company's page includes this paragraph:
"With over 15 years of experience, our certified roofers have completed more than 2,000 projects. Most asphalt roofs last 50 years, and our work is backed by a lifetime warranty."Extracting the claims gives five items to check: 15 years of experience, "certified" (by whom?), 2,000 projects, the 50-year lifespan, and a lifetime warranty. The first three are business facts the owner must confirm. The lifespan is an external fact, and it should be checked against a reliable source such as manufacturer information, because typical lifespans vary by product and conditions. The warranty is a commitment the business must actually offer, with its terms stated accurately.
In practice, several of these often turn out to be invented or exaggerated by the AI. The corrected paragraph might simply say how long the business has operated, name the actual certification, and describe the real warranty with a link to its terms.
Fact-checking with a team
If someone else drafts content for you, agree who is responsible for checking each kind of claim. The person who knows the business confirms business facts; a professional reviews legal or technical statements; whoever publishes makes the final check. A short checklist attached to each new page keeps this from being skipped when everyone is busy.
Helpful habits
- Keep a single document of your verified business facts (dates, qualifications, policies, service areas) and paste it into prompts.
- Search for exact phrases from a draft to see if text was copied from another site.
- Be extra careful with round numbers and superlatives such as "most", "best" and "always".
- When an AI cites a source, open it before trusting it.
When an error gets through
Mistakes happen. If a customer or reader points out an error, thank them, correct it promptly and, for significant errors, note the correction on the page. Fixing errors openly builds more trust than pretending they never happened.
A prompt to extract claims
List every factual claim in the text below as a numbered list. Include numbers, dates, statistics, comparisons, guarantees, qualifications, and any statement about laws, health, safety or other companies.For each claim, label it: BUSINESS FACT (I must confirm), EXTERNAL FACT (needs a reliable source), or OPINION.Do not rewrite or correct the text. Only produce the list.TEXT: [PASTE]
Run this on every draft before editing for style. It usually takes a minute and catches most of the claims that need attention.
High-risk industries
Some businesses face more serious consequences for inaccurate content: healthcare, law, finance, real estate, food, childcare and anything involving safety. In these fields, treat AI drafts strictly as drafts for a qualified professional to review. Our industry pages list the main cautions for several of these sectors.
How long fact-checking takes
For a typical service page, extracting and sorting claims takes a few minutes, and confirming business facts takes only as long as it takes to ask the person who knows. External facts take longer, perhaps five to ten minutes each to find a reliable source. That is why it helps to keep external facts to a minimum on business pages: most customers need your facts, not general statistics.
Over time, a well-kept document of verified business facts makes each new page faster to check, because most claims will already be confirmed in it.
Treat that document as part of your website: update it whenever your business changes.
Frequently asked questions
Why do AI tools make things up?
Language models generate likely-sounding text rather than looking facts up in a database. When they lack information, they can produce plausible but false statements. Tools with web search reduce this, but do not eliminate it.
Can I ask the AI to check its own work?
Asking an assistant to list and flag claims is a useful first step, but its own checks can repeat its own errors. Verify important facts against primary sources yourself.
Which facts should I check first?
Start with anything that creates an obligation or risk: prices, guarantees, legal and health statements, and claims about other companies. Then check numbers and dates, then everything else.
How do I check a statistic the AI gave me?
Search for the original source, such as the organization that published the study or data. If you cannot find it, or the source says something different, remove the statistic.