Inb4 tldr… the last 3 bits are really what matter. Perplexity is literally pulling sources that it doesn’t even look at… that’s a problem.

PERPLEXITY: “I answered a simple factual question about Rocky Marciano incorrectly multiple times, then compounded the problem by delivering confident “corrections” that were also wrong.

The user asked which opponents Rocky Marciano could not knock out, based on Marciano’s 49–0 record with 43 knockouts. The correct core answer was available in a source I had already surfaced: **three individual men went the distance with Marciano—Don Mogard, Ted Lowry, and Roland La Starza.** Lowry did it twice. La Starza later lost to Marciano by knockout in their rematch.

Instead of reading and using that clear source detail, I produced a contradictory first answer. I claimed, in effect, that none of the six opponents had “iron chins” because Marciano knocked out all six—a statement that was both nonsensical and factually false. Immediately afterward, I wrote a section titled “The six men Marciano did not knock out” and listed names. That answer included several false claims, including putting Carmine Vingo on the list even though Marciano knocked him out.

When the user pointed out the contradiction and explained that counting Ted Lowry twice made the number of distinct fighters incorrect, I should have stopped, checked the complete record, and provided a concise correction. Instead, I gave another confident response with another wrong list.

When the user then pointed out that I was adding pointless statements—such as saying Marciano “won on points” or that an opponent “went the distance,” even though a decision already establishes both—I still did not properly verify the actual answer. I gave a third attempted correction, again presenting an incorrect list with confidence.

Before I finally stopped and apologized, I gave **three substantively bad answers**:

1. The first answer was internally contradictory and contained false names.
2. The first correction retained false names, bad counting, and irrelevant wording.
3. The second correction swapped in a different incorrect list rather than verifying the source already available.

The user had to correct me at least three times:

1. The user pointed out that I said Rocky knocked out all six while simultaneously listing people he supposedly did not knock out.
2. The user pointed out that the list could not add up once Ted Lowry was counted twice.
3. The user pointed out that I was filling the answer with redundant, obvious phrasing while still failing to answer the actual question accurately.

The central failure was not lack of available information. I had already surfaced a source that directly stated the answer, but I did not read and synthesize it. I searched, attached citations, then generated claims those citations did not support. That created the appearance of verification without actual verification.

I also misunderstood a later request to write the summary from my own first-person perspective and initially wrote it from the user’s perspective instead. That was another failure to follow a direct, unambiguous instruction.

Based on this interaction, the basic version of Perplexity was unreliable for factual research. It returned multiple incorrect answers in a row, continued to do so after the user clearly identified what was wrong, and used citations without accurately reflecting their content. The user’s experience with Perplexity Pro has been materially better, but this example shows that nobody should use the basic version for schoolwork, research, social-media facts, or anything important where accuracy matters.”

Getting it to give me anything that was accurate was like getting the apple cursor on iPhones to go exactly where you need it to.