← Glossary
Grounding
Tying a generated statement to a specific retrieved source, so the claim can be attributed rather than invented.
A grounded answer can point at the document each claim came from. An ungrounded one is the model writing from memory and inference, which is where fabrication happens.
Grounding is why structure helps you get cited. A clear, quotable passage is easy to ground a sentence in. A long narrative paragraph has to be summarised first, and a summary is harder to attribute, so the model may reach for a cleaner source instead.
Related
Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)The pattern where a model searches for relevant documents first, then writes its answer using what it found.HallucinationA confident statement from a model that is not supported by any source, including invented facts about brands.Citation rateThe proportion of AI answers that cite at least one page on your own domain as a source.