A Trakkr Research study traced 1,285 statistics cited by major AI assistants (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Google AI Overviews) back to their original sources, revealing many are "zombie stats" — numbers repeated confidently across AIs but ultimately unmoored from any actual research study. The investigation found that while most numbers had some basis, a notable fraction traced only to blogs, sales pages, or writing samples with no primary source.
Background
Growing concerns about AI hallucinations and fabricated citations have prompted multiple investigations into whether LLMs can reliably attribute statistics to real sources. This study builds on that conversation by systematically tracking where commonly cited AI numbers actually originate.
- Source
- hackernews
- Published
- Oct 29, 2026 at 11:06 PM
- Score
- 7.0 / 10