Hallucination
TL;DR
When AI generates confidently-stated but factually incorrect information.
What does this mean?
An AI hallucination occurs when a language model generates information that sounds plausible and confident but is factually wrong or completely made up.
How it works
Language models always predict the “most likely continuation.” When the model doesn’t actually know an answer, it fills the gap with plausible-sounding text — without knowing it’s wrong.
Example
A chatbot invents a paragraph number in a law that doesn’t exist, or cites a research paper that was never written.
Why it matters
Hallucinations are the biggest trust risk in enterprise AI. Countermeasures like grounding and RAG are therefore essential.
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