Hallucination
When an AI confidently states something false or made-up as if it were fact.
01 Definition
A hallucination is when an AI model generates information that sounds plausible and is stated with total confidence, but is actually wrong, fabricated, or not grounded in any real source — like a fake citation, an invented statistic, or a nonexistent API function.
02 Why It Matters
This is the single biggest reason to fact-check AI output before relying on it, especially for anything factual, legal, medical, or citation-based.
03 Example
Asking an AI for a legal case citation and getting one that sounds real but doesn't actually exist.