AI is providing false information about the company: what to do

This text is part of the guide Brand visibility in AI: how it works and how to measure it.

What kind of incorrect information about companies does AI most often provide?

• old address, telephone number or opening hours,
• out-of-date prices or prices that never existed,
• services or products not included in the range,
• information stating that the company is no longer trading or has changed its name, even though this is not true,
• confusion with a company of a similar name from another town or sector,
• attributing your product to another company.

Incorrect information is a different problem from a lack of information. If the model doesn’t recognise the company at all, start with the text ChatGPT doesn’t know my company.

Where does AI get its false information about the company from?

From out-of-date training data

The model learns from texts collected up to a specific date. If an address or price list has changed since then, the old version remains in its database. When the model responds without searching the web, it will provide that version.

From conflicting online sources

The website says one thing, a catalogue from five years ago says another, and an old article on a local news site says yet another. The model compiles its answer from multiple sources at once and does not always choose the most recent one. In the AirOps survey of March 2026 ChatGPT only cited 15% pages that it had downloaded, so you have no control over which one it chooses, as long as the old versions are still online.

With a similar name

A company with a similar name, a product named after the brand, an abbreviation used by several organisations. The model combines information about different entities into a single description. The same phenomenon in reverse is described under the entry brand aliases: In the Wapiennik „Węże” case, the models knew the product name but did not associate it with the company.

From the gaps that the model fills in itself

When facts are lacking, the model sometimes fills in the gaps with something that sounds plausible. OpenAI states that GPT-6 has a better understanding of the limits of their knowledge and tends to speak out more often when it lacks information, but no model is immune to this. The best protection is a website where the facts about the company are stated clearly.

How can you find out where the error is coming from?

Before you start correcting the data, work out why the AI is providing incorrect information about the company. The following four tests will help you do this:

• Ask a question with search enabled and check which pages the model links to. If there’s an old directory or an out-of-date subpage amongst them, you’ve found the source.
• Ask the same question in a few chat rooms. If the error occurs everywhere, it is most likely due to a common source. If it occurs in only one instance, it may stem from that model’s training data.
• Use the temporary chat. In ChatGPT temporary chat By default, it does not use memory, so the response does not repeat what the model has learnt from your conversations.
• Search for misinformation on Google in quotation marks, for example an old address. The results will show where it can still be found online.

The following explains how to prepare such a test so as not to skew the result: How to check whether AI recommends your brand.

How can I correct company details at source?

In this order, because each subsequent step builds on the previous one:

1. My own website. The ‘About Us’ page, contact details and price list should clearly state up-to-date information: full name, address, range of services, region, prices or price ranges, along with the date of the last update. Update old subpages containing out-of-date information, or redirect them to the current versions so that they do not remain in the index.
2. Company Profile on Google. The same information as on the website. Company Profile It is one of the first places that search engines – and the AI-generated responses based on them – read.
3. Catalogues and old posts. Update or delete any out-of-date profiles in business directories. If you do not have access to them, please contact the website administrator.
4. Articles and media. If the error is in an article, please ask the editorial team to correct or update it.
5. Wikidata. If the company is listed there, check it. Wikidata It is an open database used by many systems.

Once you’ve made the changes, ask search engines to revisit the page. Bing does this by Bing Webmaster Tools, and its index is relevant to ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot. Google states in AI function documentation, …that AI Overviews and AI mode use the same index as regular search results.

Can you report a bug directly to ChatGPT or Gemini?

Chatbots have buttons for rating responses and the option to explain what is wrong. This serves as a signal to the provider, but it is no guarantee that the response will change, nor does it replace the need to improve the data sources. As long as there is conflicting data online, the model may revert to it.

How long does it take before AI stops providing incorrect data?

It depends on where the error originates. If it stems from a search, the change will take effect once the search engine has refreshed the corrected pages and the model encounters them in subsequent queries. If it stems from the training data, the error may persist until a new version of the model is released. An example of such a change is GPT-6, which has been in use in ChatGPT since October 2026; we discuss this in the text GPT-6 in ChatGPT: what it means for brand visibility. He explains why the effects are delayed Why do changes take time?.

How can you make sure the error doesn’t happen again?

By regularly checking what the models say about the company. If an AI provides incorrect information about the company once, and the source of the error remains online, the model may revert to it after every update. In Aelo, you can add phrases containing the brand name to the measurement, which we track separately from category phrases. This allows you to see how ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity describe the brand when someone asks about it directly, and whether the error has been rectified. The results are fed into the knowledge graph Synapsis, which is built using the information you provide, scans and citations; one of its sources is the ‘Brand Identity’ form, where you enter up-to-date facts about the company. On this basis, we prepare tasks in Tickets. It’s up to you to decide which parts of this you’ll put into practice.

You can carry out the first measurement free of charge; we explain how to do this in the text Free brand visibility measurement using AI. Agencies that manage data for a large number of clients can find out more on the website Aelo for agencies, and local businesses on the website Aelo for small businesses.

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FAQ

Sources

• AirOps, report on searches, follow-up queries and citations in ChatGPT (March 2026): https://www.airops.com/report/influence-of-retrieval-fanout-and-google-serps-in-chatgpt
• OpenAI, GPT-6 and Intelligent UI for everyone (7 October 2026): https://openai.com/index/gpt-6-for-everyone/
• OpenAI, temporary chat: https://help.openai.com/en/articles/8914046-temporary-chat-faq
• Google Search Central, AI features and your website: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features