Numbers for a report: can you trust the sources AI cites?

#AI makes up citations as fluently as everything else

You're about to paste market data the AI summarized into a report when your manager asks, "Where's this number from?" You ask the AI, and it names a plausible institution and a report title. When you go looking, the report doesn't exist. Or it exists, and the number isn't in it.

Generative AI is good at stringing together natural sentences, and a sentence that looks like a citation comes out just as naturally. That's why an AI that only names its sources in words is hard to trust at work. A source should come as a link you can click to open the original, and that's how OwlAI attaches evidence to its answers.

#Numbers used at work have to be checkable

Asking something out of personal curiosity carries less weight than looking for the basis of a business decision. Numbers and facts used at work have to be checkable by someone else. Whoever receives the report should be able to open the original, and when a number is wrong, they should be able to trace back where it went wrong.

An answer whose source can't be checked sends someone back to research it from scratch. The time the AI seemed to save gets spent all over again at the verification step.

#Sources come as links that open with a click

If an answer relied on material such as web pages, the links collect under Sources below the answer, and clicking one opens the original right away. Inside the answer text, the values and document names it relied on carry links too, so you can check anything you're unsure about right where you're reading.

Links go beyond web pages. If an internal document was the evidence, the link opens that document inside OwlAI. If the information came from a connected business service, it opens the relevant screen in that service. And if an administrator has registered shortcut link rules, you can click an order number or customer code in the answer to open its detail screen in your internal business system. Web page, internal document, or business system screen, a source attached as a link is checked the same way: click it open.

Numbers pulled from a database are checked through the process rather than a link. In the Thinking panel above the answer, open the details of the data query step, and you see the exact query the AI sent to the database and the results it got back. If you doubt how something was aggregated, read that query yourself.

#Click the few numbers that matter

Below the OwlAI input box sits a note: "Verify important information before use." An AI answer is a fast way to gather evidence, a starting point rather than a conclusion to copy over unchecked.

When evidence comes attached in a form you can click open, nobody has to go hunting for the original. Get in the habit of clicking just the few numbers that will go into your report, and you can use AI answers faster and with more confidence. If you find a wrong answer, press the rating button below it and pick a problem type such as "The data was wrong." The ratings collect right away in the administrator's answer feedback screen and become the list of what to fix in answer quality.