It’s usually not “one bug.” It’s a pattern of missing evidence, ambiguous instructions, and pressure to produce an answer.
Hallucination risk increases when the system has to “fill in” without enough grounding. Here are frequent triggers:
Once you know the causes, you can reduce the risk in your workflow.
Ask for what you actually need, and define what counts as “supported.”
When possible, give the system the sources you want it to rely on.
Verify hard claims first, especially in high-stakes contexts.
No, but it reduces risk by making the task clearer and by limiting guessing.
Fluent responses can still be unsupported. Confidence tone doesn’t equal evidence.
Use a detector signal as a triage step, then verify the most important claims manually.
Yes. It’s useful whenever you’re about to share or cite information.