4 Benefits of Fact-Checking Tools

What if there was a way to get real-time verification of any facts or other details before you hit publish? 

In this article, we take a closer look at why fact checking is important considering the consequences of AI hallucinations, the benefits of fact-checking tools, and some of the top features of Originality.ai’s fact checker.

Why Fact Check? The Fallout of AI Hallucinations

With so much information at our fingertips, it’s all too easy to take generative AI text at face value. However, AI can sometimes suffer from what’s known as AI hallucinations.

AI hallucinations happen when AI-based LLMs (Large Language Models) like ChatGPT and others generate information that is presented as factual but is actually incorrect.

So, how do you know if the text you’re reading is accurate or false? You fact-check it. 

Failing to fact-check a piece, especially if a fact or figure was stated by AI, can lead to a number of problems. 

Example of an AI hallucination

AI hallucination:

In February 2023, when Google first demoed its Bard AI (now Gemini), the system (incorrectly) stated that the James Webb Space Telescope “took the very first pictures of a planet outside of our own solar system.” 

Fact-checked:

The first photo of a planet outside our solar system was actually taken over a decade before the James Webb Space Telescope was even launched. 

This AI hallucination had major repercussions for Google. Not only did it weaken trust in their AI abilities but, Reuters reported that Alphabet (the parent company of Google) lost $100 billion dollars in market value as a result. 

4 Benefits of Automated Fact-Checking

Fact-checking is an asset for editors, content publishers, and journalists alike.

Prior to automated fact-checking, reviewing information required extensive manual research. In a world where 24-hour news and content cycles are the norm, there simply aren’t enough hours in the day.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has greatly streamlined this process by automating fact-checking. Today, web publishers in many industries often use automated fact-checking to optimize their workflow. 

While it’s still important to keep a human in the loop to review content flagged as incorrect, an automated fact-checker is a fantastic editorial tool that complements the expertise of writers, editors, and web publishers.

Automated fact-checking offers a number of benefits:

1. Review facts fast with real-time fact-checkers

It’s hard to beat real-time when you need to know precisely what was said, when, and by whom. 

Real-time AI fact checking gives content creators, editors, and publishers the ability to quickly verify information so that they can concentrate on publishing and sharing relevant information fast. 

2. Prevent misinformation

Real-time fact-checking helps spot inaccuracies or misinformation before it spreads. 

When change is a constant, whether you’re referring to healthcare, finance, or even the news, misinformation can pose a number of challenges. Not to mention that fact-checking is also important for businesses to help them avoid brand misinformation.

3. Consistency across content

For those organizations producing a large amount of content, including corporate marketing teams, digital marketing agencies, or news organizations, maintaining factual accuracy is a must. But doing so across every piece of content they publish is paramount. 

Organizations like these need that kind of reliable consistency to build confidence and trust in what they publish. When viewers know that they can rely on the content as factual and honest, they’re much more likely to trust the company doing the publishing.

Learn more about AI fact-checking accuracy in our study. 

4. Faster turnaround time

Because fact-checking with AI is quick, it frees up valuable human time and skills to focus more on refining the pieces, creative work, or going deeper to uncover any interesting or undiscovered pieces of information that might ordinarily be overlooked. 

With a fact-checker in your editorial toolkit, the focus becomes “How can we publish the best quality content and qualify what’s being published so that it’s accurate for the audience.” 

An Overview of Originality.ai’s Fact Checker

Originality.ai’s Fact Checker was built with content editors, web publishers, and agencies in mind. Knowing that each statement has been cross-checked helps editors maintain integrity, which in turn, reflects well on their brand. 

For editors or content creators who publish often, work under tight deadlines, and need to maintain the highest quality, reliability, and precision in their posts, a reliable AI fact checker helps automate the heavy lifting of researching details manually while still prioritizing accuracy. 

Here are a few benefits of the Originality.ai fact checker: 

To demonstrate the benefits of the Originality.ai fact checker, we ran a fact-checking scan on a section of this article.

• Review fact-checking scans with a list of sources. Originality.ai provides links to sources, giving editors the ability to independently check the source and better understand the reasoning. In the example above, the source listed was our AI fact-checking accuracy study.
• Maintain transparency. The capability to review a list of sources provides a greater level of transparency. By showing the source, Originality.ai helps editors better understand the context around the highlighted facts and gives them the ability to check it themselves.
• Scan entire documents. Using Originality.ai’s fact checker, content editors have the ability to simply copy and paste the content they want to check into the Content Scanner, saving time and improving overall efficiency.

Final Thoughts

Fact-checking tools offer a number of fantastic benefits, such as freeing up time for editors to focus on quality standards, preventing misinformation, and establishing content consistency across large publications.

Ready to try a best-in-class fact-checking tool designed especially for content editors and publishers? Try Originality.ai’s Fact Checker today! 

Then, learn more about fact-checking in our top guides:

• Why Is Fact-checking Important?
• How to Identify Fake News as a Web Publisher
• 5 Tips For Teaching Media Literacy