AI tools do not create original information. It is similar to Wikipedia.
While it seems like magic and that an AI tool is intelligent, it is only as 'smart' as the content it was trained on. Chatbot tools like ChatGPT, Copilot or Gemini are trained off the content openly available on the internet. It is basically scraping the internet to provide a summary.
Large Language Models (LLMs) are trained on large amounts of content. When you ask a LLM a question it rapidly searches all that content and puts words together in patterns it discovered that seem logical. Sometimes it cites its sources, sometimes it does not, or can not.
Unlike static sources such as a book or journal article, AI summaries and Wikipedia might not have the same information or output if you look at it on a different day. AI output in particular might change from question to question and be inconsistent.
| Source | Source Type | Why it is Primary or Secondary |
|---|---|---|
| Blog on the internet where a human describes an experience working with alpacas | original or primary | The person who experienced it wrote about it |
| Article on the internet where an author describes the experiences of 3 people who wrote blogs about experiences with alpacas and provides links to original blogs | summary or secondary | The author summarizes other peoples' work |
| AI summary of experiences with alpacas | summary of other summaries or tertiary | AI tool scrapes both primary and secondary sources to create a summary |
| Wikipedia | summary of other summaries or tertiary | Any encyclopedia is a summary of primary and secondary sources |
AI tools are trained on existing content and each tool will have different content it is trained on. To figure out how the AI tool was trained you might have do some digging. Some places to try include:
Since most free chatbots are trained on the open internet this includes false information, people's opinions, parody sites, and unverified 'facts'. The chatbot puts all of that information into an answer and presents it as truth.
You should always verify information and sources they provide.
AI chatbots put together words that might be logically connected to answer your question. It might find a real journal title and real author and make up an article title to match your query. Always ask yourself "Is this a real citation and source?"
Bachrach, Gerson D. The Galician Jewish Economic Elite, 1772–1914 (1978)
No results? Try searching with different elements of the citation.
Put the title in quotation marks (searches for that exact thing)
“The Galician Jewish Economic Elite”
If there is a journal title, search for just the journal title, in quotation marks. This will help you find the journal on the internet.
“Journal of Military History”
Use Google Scholar with the author and a word from the title
Bachrach, Gerson D. Galician
If you do locate the author, sometimes there will be a list of works. This can help you verify if the work was created by that author.
