How to fact-check AI-generated content in 7 steps?

Artificial intelligence (AI) has shaken the world with its quick adoption across all mainstream fields, such as medicine, education, engineering, agriculture, IT, and technology.

This has led to the opening of new information portals through AI-generated content. However, fact-checking AI-generated content has been a challenge since its inception.

Given that AI can mass-produce content within a few seconds, the chances are that the AI content generators might spit out some misleading information.

So, to cope with these AI-based content creation challenges, marketers, agencies, and publishers must rely on trusted tools like Contentpen. It’s an advanced AI blog writer and content generator that streamlines AI-based content generation for both personal and professional users.

The best part about Contentpen is that it equips bloggers, SEOs, marketers, and influencers to create and publish high-quality, SEO-optimized articles within no time.

Why is it important to fact-check AI content?

AI-powered content is gaining massive popularity, especially among digital marketing circles. The reason being it’s easy-to-create and affordable for everyone, which makes AI content verification and authentication a challenging task. Therefore, AI content fact-checking has never been this important.

Let’s go through some of the key reasons for fact-checking AI content:

Risk of spreading misinformation

Spreading incorrect information generated with AI can be extremely damaging to your brand. Not only does it hurt your brand voice, but it also affects the audience that consumes the content. This is why it’s important to have a check-and-balance on the AI-generated content.

AI hallucinations

While AI content generators can give answers or generate pieces that have low content accuracy, an AI tool may generate content that contains completely unverified, incorrect information. This behavior of AI content creation tools is called AI hallucinations.

Inaccurate explanation of critical subjects

One of the key reasons why it’s important to have a fact-checking system for AI content in place is that inaccurate information on critically important subjects, such as medicine, health, fitness, finance, and others, could have serious consequences on people’s lives.

Reputation at stake

Reputation is hard to make but even harder to maintain. In the digital marketing world, where every individual and brand wants to dominate the space with high-ranking articles, viral TikTok videos, and million-view YouTube videos, reputation is always at stake. So, publishing AI content without fact-checking puts the brand reputation at risk.

7 steps to fact-check AI-generated text

Experienced digital marketers and professional bloggers ensure that they fact-check AI-generated content before they hit publish on their blogs. Here are seven steps to take when fact-checking AI-generated content:

Step 1: Identify the source and context

The way AI generates text is that it scans the relevant sources and compiles information based on the collection. Therefore, it’s necessary to take a moment to examine where it came from and what purpose it serves. Blindly trusting or sharing AI-generated content can lead to certain issues.

You must have some idea about the source of AI-generated text to get a clear picture of it. AI-generated outputs can be shaped by prompts, user intent, or platform defaults, so context matters. Make sure the source of the AI content is identified and mentioned.

Step 2: Cross-verify claims with trusted sources

One of the essential steps is the cross-verification of the claims. Don’t accept facts at face value. Check key claims against credible sources such as government websites, well-known media outlets, statistics portals, or academic databases.

This is especially important for data-driven content (that includes statistics, dates, or numbers) or news-based content. When using AI for content creation, supplement it with your manual research process to ensure accuracy.

For example, Statista is the go-to website for various types of statistics:

Step 3: Analyze citations and references

It’s easier to get carried away when generating text with AI-powered writing tools. It’s no surprise that AI can sometimes generate fake or misrepresented citations. When it comes to cited sources, they can be fake or unavailable. So, always check whether the cited sources exist, are properly formatted, and genuinely support the statements made.

Sometimes, tools like ChatGPT can create hyperlinks based on the prompt, but the pages it’s linking out to don’t exist. 

To solve this, Contentpen comes equipped with built-in sitemap integration, allowing it to automatically add internal links to your content, if you choose to enable it. You can also take advantage of the external linking feature, which keeps your content accurate and SEO-optimized. 

It intelligently suggests relevant links from your own site or trusted external sources, so you’re not just linking for the sake of it, you’re linking with purpose. With Contentpen, you can eliminate broken links, strengthen your site structure, and build reader trust with confidence.

Step 4: Use fact-checking tools and extensions

One of the important aspects of using AI-generated text is the fact-checking. Publishing AI content without proper examination either manually or using a third-party fact-checking tool can have serious consequences. Nobody wants to put their credibility on the line.

Fact-checking tools can make your work faster and more reliable, thanks to tools like Google Fact Check Explorer, Snopes, and others. Moreover, browser extensions such as NewsGuard or Media Bias/Fact Check can also help validate trending topics or controversial claims.

Step 5: Detect bias or hallucination in AI text

Most AI tools give a heads-up to the users about the possibility of incorrect information. The reason is that these AI models can “hallucinate”, meaning make up facts or inject bias through overly confident or emotionally charged phrases.

Users are advised to be alert to statements that sound overly definitive without support or sources. Contentpen helps you clean up these biases and tone issues by refining AI drafts into accurate, neutral, and human-sounding content that fits your editorial standards.

Step 6: Review data, stats, and quotes separately

Since AI writing tools can find references or cite sources in the generated content, there is no guarantee that those citations or references are 100% right.

AI-generated content may mix accurate information with plausible-sounding but incorrect data. Always double-check statistics, dates, and quoted statements using sources like official reports, press releases, or verified interviews.

The whole point is that don’t blindly rely on automated writing tools alone. Try to build a habit of confirming details manually, especially when publishing content on data-heavy topics.

Step 7: Consult subject matter experts (if needed)

You must have seen a tag saying “medically reviewed by [doctor’s name]” on top of the medical or health-related articles. The purpose is to showcase that a subject matter expert verifies this information.

However, this verification shouldn’t be limited to medicinal or health content. If you publish content in legal, scientific, finance, and fitness niches, it’s wise to consult experts before publishing.

AI can mimic confidence or hallucinate without seeming dodgy, so getting a professional’s input can be the difference between credible and misleading content. Whether you’re refining a blog post or publishing an eBook, combine AI support with real-world insights for high-authority publishing.

Conclusion

The purpose of writing this piece about fact-checking AI-generated content is to ensure that the brand’s reputation isn’t affected by low-quality AI-based content.

When a brand publishes unverified content or doesn’t support the claims with citations, it starts to affect its credibility.

Since AI tools can add gibberish or link out to non-existent sources, automated fact-checking seems inevitable, especially for publishers that heavily rely on AI writing tools.

Here are the key takeaways to apply when fact-checking AI-generated content:

• The answers AI-powered writing tools generate must make sense to a common person. The advanced AI models can work on in-depth scientific and technical topics to assist users.
• The real-life implementation of the suggested solutions is important. The solutions AI suggests must be doable in real life and shouldn’t be vague, resulting in ambiguity.
• Users must adhere to the responsible and fair use policy of the AI writing tools to create valuable and effective content that impacts readers’ lives.
• Users must not solely rely on the AI tools for answering questions related to health, medicine, food, finance, and other sensitive areas.

No wonder fact-checking for AI-generated content can be a tedious task unless you have a system in place or a tool that streamlines the whole process.

Contentpen is a state-of-the-art AI blog writing tool that creates and publishes highly effective, SEO-friendly articles without breaking the bank.

It’s an advanced AI writer that dives deep into the user’s website to gather brand knowledge. Users can also provide brand assets, such as docs or PDFs, to let the AI agent know everything about the brand.

It can create an effective blog outline that transforms the blog writing purpose. It offers a research-backed structure and semantic SEO build-up from the very base.

Contentpen employs multiple AI agents that collaborate and work in coherence. Moreover, it’s able to produce both authoritative and engaging content across different social media channels.

FAQs about fact-checking AI-generated content

How to fact-check AI information?

There are several fact-checking AI information tools available on the market, for instance, Automated Fact-Checker and AI Facts Checking are the two popular ones.

Does Google fact-check AI content?

Google seems to be working on its fact-checking AI content tool that might be available sometime in the future. However, there are no confirmations whatsoever.

Does ChatGPT do its fact-checking?

ChatGPT doesn’t have its fact-checking system in place as of now, but you never know what they come up with in the future. Users have to rely on third-party tools for this.