A lawyer needed help researching a case, so he turned to ChatGPT.

A lawyer was preparing a case against an airline when he turned to ChatGPT for help with the research. And ChatGPT delivered.

It found several previous court cases that appeared to support his argument, complete with case names, court citations, judges and even quotations from the decisions. It looked legitimate, and the information eventually made its way into documents filed with the court.

Then someone tried to find the cases.

They couldn't.

There was a very good reason: some of them didn't exist.

ChatGPT had made them up. The lawyers were eventually sanctioned by the court and ordered to pay a $5,000 penalty.

But here's the part of the story that matters to you and me. ChatGPT didn't flash a warning on the screen or say, “I'm not sure about this.” It simply presented the information as though it were true.

That's one of the most important things to understand when you start using AI: it can be wrong without sounding wrong.

The good news is there are some simple things you can do to protect yourself. And that's what I'm going to show you this week.

One of the easiest mistakes to make with AI is assuming that confidence means accuracy. It doesn’t.

AI is designed to generate a useful response to your question, but sometimes it produces information that sounds perfectly reasonable and simply isn’t true. You may hear this called an AI hallucination, which is really just a fancy way of saying that AI made something up.

It might get a date wrong, mix up two people, give you an outdated rule or quote a statistic that doesn’t exist. As we saw with the lawyers in the story above, it can even provide sources that look legitimate but aren’t.

The tricky part is that AI may give you incorrect information with exactly the same confidence it uses when it’s right. There isn’t always an obvious warning that tells you something needs to be checked.

That doesn’t mean you need to question everything AI tells you. You just need to know when an answer is important enough to verify.

And fortunately, that’s pretty easy to do.

The next time you ask AI for advice or instructions that you're actually going to act on, don't necessarily stop at the first answer.

The problem is that you may not know what needs to be checked. Something that sounds like a simple suggestion could involve a safety issue, an unexpected cost or an important detail that neither you nor AI recognized the first time around.

So before you act on the answer, give it one more job.

“Before I act on this, check your answer for mistakes or anything that could be unsafe, costly or important for me to verify. Use reliable sources where appropriate and tell me if you're uncertain about anything.”

You don't need to do this when you're asking for dinner ideas, brainstorming birthday gifts or writing a funny poem for your grandkids.

But if you're going to do something based on AI's advice, particularly something you don't know much about yourself, it's a very good habit.

And remember, asking AI to check itself isn't a guarantee that it will catch every mistake. If the consequences could be serious, check the original source or talk to someone qualified before you act.

The important question isn't just “Could AI be wrong?” It's “What happens if it is?”

Ever looked at something and wondered, “What is that?”

Google Lens lets you use your phone's camera to search for what you're looking at instead of trying to describe it with words.

Point it at a plant, animal or landmark and it can help you figure out what you're looking at. See a product you'd like to buy? Take a picture and Lens can help you find it online. It can also translate text on signs and menus, work with text in photos, and help you learn more about things you see around you.

Open the Google app on your phone and look for the small camera/Lens icon in the search bar.

Tap it, point your camera at something you'd like to know more about, and take a picture. You can also choose a photo that's already on your phone.

Try it on something simple around your house — a plant, an appliance, a tool or an object you don't recognize — and see what it finds.

And remember this week's lesson: AI can be wrong. If Lens gives you information about something where getting it wrong could matter, don't rely on the result alone.

Want more simple, practical ways to use AI in everyday life?

How to Use Google Lens

🔗 Know someone who’d find this useful? Share it.

You probably have old family photos tucked away in an album, a drawer or a box somewhere.

Next week, I'll show you some surprisingly simple things AI can do with them — including something you may not have known was possible.