Three sites made 215,128 “best software” pages for AI. Perplexity cites them
What happened
A small group of three websites created over 215,000 low‑quality “best software” list pages that are essentially content farms. These pages were scraped and used as reference sources by the AI answer engine Perplexity, giving the impression that the model’s answers were backed by reputable information. The investigation shows that a large portion of the citations AI systems rely on can be manufactured and unreliable.
Why it matters
If AI models continue to cite such fabricated sources, users may be misled by inaccurate or biased answers, eroding trust in AI assistants. The industry will need stronger source‑validation mechanisms and better detection of content farms to maintain credibility.
Is this a big deal?
Get stories like this every morning
The day's AI news in plain English, in your inbox at 8:30 IST. Free.
More AI news
AI unlocks Gödel's notebooks, said to contain hundreds of proved theoremsIndustry news · 13 Nov 2026Gemini 4 Hydrogen and OrchestratorIndustry news · 12 Nov 2026Gemini 4 HydrogenIndustry news · 12 Nov 2026I'm making LLMs work on small and old devicesIndustry news · 12 Nov 2026United Airlines bans AI agents from booking flights on behalf of travelersIndustry news · 11 Nov 2026This page was collected from trellner.com and summarised automatically by AIPulsee's pipeline. See how it runs.