The 10 leading AI tools repeated false information on topics in the news more than one third of the time â 35 percent â in August 2025, up from 18 percent in August 2024
The increase reflects a structural tradeoff. As chatbots adopted real-time web searches, they moved away from declining to answer questions. Their non-response rates fell from 31 percent in August 2024 to 0 percent in August 2025.
Instead of citing data cutoffs or refusing to weigh in on sensitive topics, the LLMs now pull from a polluted online information ecosystem and treat unreliable sources as credible.