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AI Glossary · Last reviewed May 2026

Hallucination

Hand-written by a real person. Reviewed against current practice in May 2026.
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Definition

When a model confidently states something false.

Full write-up coming soon

We are working on a detailed page for Hallucination - covering why it matters, how it works, related terms, and the tools that use it.

Related terms

From the glossary
Fine-tuning
LLM
RAG

Frequently asked questions

Can hallucinations be eliminated?+

Not entirely with current architectures. They can be reduced with grounding techniques like RAG, output verification, constrained decoding, and human review, but a zero-hallucination guarantee does not exist yet.

Why do LLMs hallucinate?+

Models are trained to produce plausible next tokens, not to verify factual accuracy. When the correct answer is uncertain or absent from training data, the model generates a confident-sounding guess.

How can I detect hallucinations?+

Check outputs against authoritative sources, use a second model to critique the first, or implement retrieval so claims can be traced back to a cited document.

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