A third of Perplexity's citations don't contain the number they're cited for
A study of Perplexity's search models reveals that over a third of citations for numerical claims either point to inaccessible pages or do not contain the cited data. The audit highlights significant reliability issues in AI-generated provenance markers.
Why it matters
As AI search tools become primary information sources, the accuracy of their citations is critical for maintaining public trust and preventing the spread of misinformation.
Of 1,826 citations Perplexity's search models attached to a sentence stating a figure, 34.7% pointed at a page that either would not open or did not contain a single figure from that sentence; scored per claim rather than per citation, 14.4% of 872 claims fail.
We asked Perplexity's two search models 310 factual questions about 210 technology companies, collected every source they cited, fetched all of them, and checked whether the page said the thing it was cited for. Of the 1,826 citations attached to a sentence stating a figure — the ones checkable without a second opinion — 34.7% pointed at a page that would not open to an ordinary reader, or opened and contained none of the numbers in the sentence they were attached to. The models placed 2,511 citation markers in all.
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