Why this is different from search
A results page shows its working. There are ten sources, each with a visible domain and often a date, and the reader does the weighing. If something looks dubious they can see that it came from a forum post in 2019.
An answer does none of that. It arrives composed, in a single voice, with the seams removed. A four-year-old profile and a current filing are blended into one paragraph, and nothing signals which part came from where.
For a senior person that matters more than it does for most subjects, because the facts people want are exactly the ones that change: current role, current company, current board seats, current status of a venture that has since been sold or wound up.
What goes wrong, in practice
- Superseded roles. The title you held two companies ago, stated in the present tense.
- Conflated identities. Someone with a similar name, merged into your record.
- Stale affiliations. A board seat resigned, an advisory role ended, a venture exited.
- Unweighted negatives. A single critical piece given the same standing as years of reporting, because the model has no way to weigh reach.
- Confident invention. Plausible details that no source supports, produced because the question was asked and an answer was expected.
What can actually be done
Being straightforward about the limits: nobody edits a model's output directly, and anyone claiming to is selling something. What is available is indirect and real.
Measure it first
Ask the major assistants the questions people actually ask, record the answers verbatim, and repeat on a schedule. This is cheap, it is the only way to know where you stand, and in our experience almost nobody has done it.
Correct the sources being drawn from
Answers are assembled from the record. Where the record is wrong at a source that will correct it, correcting it there is the most direct lever available.
Make the accurate version easy to use
Plainly stated, well-structured, current facts on properties you control, corroborated consistently elsewhere. Models favour what is clear and what agrees with itself.
Watch for drift
These systems update. What they say about you in March is not what they will say in September, and the change will not be announced.
This field is young, and the honest position is that the practices are still being established. What we can say with confidence is that the answers are measurable, that they are frequently wrong about senior people, and that the organisations checking are a small minority.