# Hallucination

> A hallucination is an AI answer that sounds right but is made up, such as a price, a policy or a promise that isn't in the business's content.

Canonical: https://heykiko.io/glossary/hallucination
Last updated: 2026-11-05

## What it means

Also called AI making things up.

Language models predict likely text and tend to guess where their knowledge runs out. In customer service it usually shows up as an invented number, policy or promise.

It's reduced by filling gaps in your content, letting the AI say it doesn't know, and keeping important actions behind rules in code.

## Related

- [RAG (retrieval-augmented generation)](https://heykiko.io/glossary/rag)
- [Knowledge base](https://heykiko.io/glossary/knowledge-base)
- [System prompt](https://heykiko.io/glossary/system-prompt)
- [How to stop a chatbot from making things up](https://heykiko.io/blog/how-to-stop-a-chatbot-making-things-up)
- [Full glossary](https://heykiko.io/glossary)