Does a recent AI answer contain only current product facts?
No. An answer's capture date tells you when it was observed, not when every product fact in it became true. Wrong About You found five stale statements among 2,922 statements in answers captured on 22 and 23 September 2026, using vendor pages read on 8 October to check the evidence.
What we measured
Measured. The study's stale label meant that a statement had been true before a documented change. Its wrong label meant contradiction of the vendor's published fact on the capture date. Its unverifiable label meant that the vendor pages did not settle the claim. Keeping those labels distinct avoids treating every questionable sentence as the same problem.
The total covered seventy vendors across fourteen software categories: 1,924 statements were classed true, 113 wrong, five stale and 880 unverifiable. Four of the five stale statements concerned pricing; the fifth concerned product names. They are statement counts in a dated collection, rather than the probability that your next answer will contain old information.
The published study reused September Index answers and checked statements under its Record rules. It did not capture a fresh set of answers on the vendor-page review date. Team review of flagged statements is in progress. Reasoned. The time an answer is generated and the effective date of the fact it repeats should therefore be recorded separately.
Our answer-study method, v1.1.
What this means for you
For a changing fact such as a price or plan name, retain the answer capture date, the source-read date and the fact's effective date where the source provides one. These dates answer different questions.
Read the conditions attached to an old fact. A historical price might be accurately described as historical; presenting it as the current price creates a different claim. Do not remove useful history simply because it is old.
Before relying on an answer for today's product decision, inspect the vendor's current primary page. The five historical stale labels do not establish which facts remain stale today, and this page does not supply a correction workflow for every product change.
Also asked as
Does a recent AI answer contain only current product facts?
Related
- Wrong About You evidence
- Checking vendor facts
- What unverifiable means
- Correcting facts after a public change
Next step
Use Free 10-question check (one engine) to compare the date of a captured statement with the dated product source you would rely on today. No email is needed; runs are limited per network and per day, and by the site's daily allowance.
When that comparison exposes a specific outdated fact, Fix one answer, $490 can work from the documented change instead of assuming a recent answer is current.
Prepared by the Broadcastwell team.
Page owner: Priya Nair, Management Consultant. Corrections: hello@broadcastwell.com