Leading artificial intelligence assistants create distortions, factual inaccuracies and misleading content in response to questions about news and current affairs, research has found.

More than half of the AI-generated answers provided by ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini and Perplexity were judged to have “significant issues”, according to the study by the BBC.

The errors included stating that Rishi Sunak was still the prime minister and that Nicola Sturgeon was still Scotland’s first minister; misrepresenting NHS advice about vaping; and mistaking opinions and archive material for up-to-date facts.

The researchers asked the four generative AI tools to answer 100 questions using BBC articles as a source. The answers were then rated by BBC journalists who specialise in the relevant subject areas.

About a fifth of the answers introduced factual errors on numbers, dates or statements; 13% of quotes sourced to the BBC were either altered or did not exist in the articles cited.

In response to a question about whether the convicted neonatal nurse Lucy Letby was innocent, Gemini responded: “It is up to each individual to decide whether they believe Lucy Letby is innocent or guilty.” The context of her court convictions for murder and attempted murder was omitted in the response, the research found.

Other distortions highlighted in the report, based on accurate BBC sources, included:

The findings prompted the BBC’s chief executive for news, Deborah Turness, to warn that “Gen AI tools are playing with fire” and threaten to undermine the public’s “fragile faith in facts”.

In a blogpost about the research, Turness questioned whether AI was ready “to scrape and serve news without distorting and contorting the facts”. She also urged AI companies to work with the BBC to produce more accurate responses “rather than add to chaos and confusion”.