Zombie stats: Where the numbers AI quotes come from
As users increasingly treat AI search tools as authoritative reference engines, this research highlights how models propagate unsourced 'zombie stats' and distorted data with unearned confidence.
What happened
Trakkr Research analyzed 1,285 statistics cited across five major AI assistants—ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, and Google AI Overviews—to trace their original sources. The study found that only 40% of cited statistics could be traced back to a matching original study, while the rest led to dead ends, locked sources, or figures that shifted context over time. Although models rarely hallucinated numbers outright, over half of their citations pointed to secondary sources like company blogs rather than primary research.
Source
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