A Just Facts study (August 2026) tested paid versions of ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Claude, and xAI's Grok on 100 politically contentious questions each, requiring every chatbot to answer and provide supporting sources. Across the 400 answers the four chatbots supplied 419 sources, and fewer than half were valid. ChatGPT correctly handled 94% of right-falsehood questions vs 75% of left-falsehood ones; Grok showed the opposite pattern (73% right, 84% left).
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Expert: Jim Agresti, President, Just Facts Just Facts President Jim Agresti: 'It is meant to show how often these AIs are propagating misinformation... many of the references supplied by the AI systems either did not exist or failed to substantiate the answers for which they were cited.' Across the 400 answers, the chatbots provided 419 sources, and only 46% were extant and valid. The questionable references included 86 webpages that did not exist and show no evidence of ever existing in the Internet Archive or Google, 77 sources that did not answer the question, 18 sources completely unrelated to the issues at hand, 15 sources asserting the polar opposite of the answers given, and 13 demonstrably false sources. ChatGPT performed best on citation validity at 57%, followed by Gemini at 49%, Claude at 44%, and Grok at 32%. Agresti pointed to a 2026 study in The Lancet finding that between 30% and 69% of AI-generated references in biomedical contexts were fabricated, calling invented citations a 'well-documented failure mode' with life-or-death implications in public policy. Source: https://www.justfacts.com/news_artificial_ignorance_political_falsehoods_leading_ais
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