Some of the most-used AI chatbots provide false information for about half of London’s small and medium sized businesses (SMEs), according to new research.
The study conducted by the Searchable, a London-based AI visibility platform, involved prompting popular AI chatbots with typical information a potential customer would ask.
This included questions about their services, contact details and other discovery information.
After comparing the answers against verified facts for each company, the results show SMEs are more than twice as likely to get false information about their businesses from the chatbots.
Searchable co-founder Chris Donnolley said: “It’s important that more small businesses are aware of how they appear in AI systems…especially when they are being misrepresented with the wrong information.”
According to digital intelligence platform Similarweb, recommendations by AI can drive twice as much traffic to a brand’s website within seven days, compared to a competitor that wasn’t recommended.
Donnolley said: “LLMs have been hallucinating information for as long as they have been around, we can’t control the mechanics of how they work.
“But when a brand is surfacing correctly more often within AI summaries, there’s a much clearer opportunity for them to attract high-intent customers.”
Large language models (LLMs), which are designed to understand and summarise information from large data sets, were surprisingly likely to confuse small or medium-sized business names.
Three different kinds of LLMs were five times more likely to confuse or misattribute the brand name of a London small or medium-sized business compared to a larger company headquartered in the city, the study found.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) last week ordered Google to rank its search results using objective and non-discriminatory criteria and to give advance notice of any major changes to how rankings work, within six months.
This is expected to give businesses a clearer insight into how their brand name appears in Google AI’s Overviews, which might help them combat the current false facts and misinformation.
Feature image: Free to use from Pexels
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