Fact-Checking
Also called Fact-Checking
Verifying a claim against trusted evidence to decide whether it’s actually true.
Think of it like
A journalist calling a second and third source before printing — no claim runs on one voice alone.
Example
A system extracts the claim "the company was founded in 1998," searches an authoritative source, and marks it true, false, or unverifiable.
How it actually works
Fact-checking pins a claim to reality, versus grounding, which only checks a claim against the documents you supplied — those documents could themselves be wrong. Automated fact-checking breaks text into discrete claims, retrieves evidence, and judges each one. It’s harder than it sounds: claims are often fuzzy, evidence conflicts, and "true" depends on framing and time. It’s a key defense against misinformation, but not a solved problem.
For product teams
The step that separates "consistent with our docs" from "actually true in the world" — sometimes you need both.
For engineers
Decompose into atomic claims, retrieve external evidence, and classify each; distinct from grounding, which only checks against supplied context.
Related
- Grounding Check — A weaker check against supplied context only.
- Misinformation — The harm it fights.
- Fact Retrieval — Pulls exact facts to verify against.
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