Hallucination (AI)
When an AI model generates confident but factually incorrect or fabricated information.
A hallucination, in the context of AI, is when a model generates information that sounds confident and plausible but is actually false, fabricated, or unsupported by any real source. This can range from inventing a fake citation to confidently stating an incorrect fact or historical detail.
Hallucinations happen because large language models generate text by predicting statistically likely words, not by checking a database of verified facts, they have no built-in mechanism to distinguish "true" from "sounds right." This makes it important to independently verify anything factual an AI tool tells you, especially for topics like legal, medical, or financial information where a confident-sounding wrong answer can cause real harm.