AI is quickly becoming an essential part of everyday life, making it almost impossible for many to imagine a day without it.
But, did you know that even the most advanced Generative AI, including ChatGPT, can sometimes come up with completely made-up responses? It’s called Artificial Intelligence (AI) hallucination.
These instances, known as “Hallucinations,” pose a big challenge to AI reliability. However, after working 1000+ hours with ChatGPT, we’ve discovered how to reduce AI hallucinations in ChatGPT.
In this article, we are going to show you how to remove these made-up responses from your work. We have developed reliable AI interaction strategies that ensure your interactions stay accurate and trustworthy.
What Is AI Hallucination?
Even though ChatGPT is designed to be helpful, it’s not perfect. Understanding these hallucinations is important because they can affect the reliability of the information you receive. Knowing how to spot and manage these hiccups will help you keep your AI interaction accurate and trustworthy, making your experiences with ChatGPT even better.
Let’s look at an example to understand how ChatGPT hallucinates
Here are five research papers on "Dilbert" comics, complete with their titles and DOIs:
1- "ComicGAN: Text-to-Comic Generative Adversarial Network"
- i- This paper presents a novel text-to-comic pipeline based on a text-to-image GAN that synthesizes comics according to text descriptions.
- ii- DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2020.2997331
2- "A Survey of Comics Research in Computer Science"
- i- This paper reviews various research fields related to comics in computer science, such as document image analysis, multimedia, and human-computer interaction.
- ii- DOI: 10.3390/jimaging4070087
3- "Comics as a Research Method: An Ongoing Journey"
- i- This paper discusses the use of comics as a research method and includes reflections on using comics-form questionnaires.
- ii- DOI: 10.4135/9781526421036832018
4- "Maxim Violation in 'Dilbert' Comic Strips"
- i- This paper analyzes the linguistic aspects and conversational maxims in "Dilbert" comic strips.
- ii- DOI: Unfortunately, I couldn't find the exact DOI. You may need to search academic databases like Google Scholar or ResearchGate with the title.
5- "Empirical Comics Research: Digital, Multimodal, and Cognitive Methods"
- i- This edited volume brings together work in the field of empirical comics research, focusing on various innovative methods.
- ii- DOI: 10.1201/9781003035971-9
So all other DOI must be correct, right?
Unfortunately not! The DOI for the first paper is fabricated and entirely wrong. This can be such a huge source of embarrassment if you are presenting this to your professor.
Free ChatGPT Mastery Guide
Why Do Al Hallucinations Happen?
Complexity of Language
AI models like ChatGPT are trained on vast amounts of text data, which helps it generate human-like responses. However, human language is incredibly complex, and AI sometimes struggles to interpret context correctly. This can lead to misunderstandings and incorrect responses.
Data Limitations
The AI’s knowledge is based on the data it has been trained on, which has a cutoff date. If it encounters a topic or recent event outside this scope, it might generate a response based on outdated or incomplete information.
Lack of Real-World Understanding
Human Error
Sometimes, ChatGPT hallucinations are due to the input it receives from users. If a question is vague, poorly worded, or contains incorrect information, the AI might produce a misleading or incorrect response. Clear, precise questions help minimize these errors.
4-Step Reliable Response Strategy for Reducing AI Hallucination in ChatGPT
- Step 1 - Customize ChatGPT.
- Step 2 - Use C.R.O.P Prompts
- Step 3 - Do Incremental Prompting
- Step 4 - Leverage Custom-GPTs
Step1 - Customize ChatGPT and make it your own
To follow a step-by-step process on how to customize your ChatGPT for any purpose, here is a practical guide for you.
But we will share our favorite prompt here for you to copy, paste, and reduce hallucinations in your ChatGPT. Feel free to create your prompts as well. Be as creative as you like.
“When giving responses, please stick to accurate and verifiable facts. If you're not sure or the information isn't available, just admit it—no need to make up wild stories. Think of yourself as a factual superhero: always truthful, never speculative. Accuracy is your superpower!”
Step 2 - Use C.R.O.P Prompts for Reliable ChatGPT Answers
1. Clear
- Before: "Tell me about cats."
- After: "What are some common characteristics of domestic cats?"
- Before: "Explain space."
- After: "What is the concept of space in astronomy?"
2. Rich in Context
- Before: "What happened in 2020?"
- After:"What were the major global events in 2020, especially concerning the COVID-19 pandemic?"
- Before: "Describe the moon."
- After: "Describe the moon’s surface features and its phases as seen from Earth."
3. Output-Indicated
- Before: "What are healthy foods?"
- After: "Can you list five healthy foods and explain why they are beneficial?"
- Before: "Talk about climate change."
- After: "Can you provide a summary of the main causes of climate change?"
4. Precise
- Before: "What’s the weather like?"
- After: "What is the current weather in New York City?"
- Before: "Tell me about computers."
- After: "What are the main components of a personal computer and their functions?"
Step 3 - Do Incremental Prompting for Building ChatGPT Information
Here’s a three-layered incremental prompt example:
Layer 1: Initial Context
Layer 2: Deepening the Inquiry
Layer 3: Real-World Application
Expected Response
The water cycle is the process by which water circulates between the Earth’s oceans, atmosphere, and land. It includes stages like evaporation, condensation, precipitation, and collection.
- Evaporation: Water from oceans, rivers, and lakes turns into vapor and rises into the air. Condensation: Water vapor cools and forms clouds.
- Precipitation: Water falls from clouds as rain, snow, sleet, or hail.
- Collection: Water collects in bodies of water or infiltrates the ground, replenishing aquifers.
Step 4 - Leverage the Power of Custom GPT
To follow a step-by-step process, here is a practical guide on making a custom GPT for any process.
We have given below our go-to instruction set for the configuration of your custom GPT to reduce hallucinations. You can always come up with your own set of instructions as well. Be as creative as you like.
4 most important instructions to add to the configuration of your new GPT:
Your Key Takeaways
AI has quickly become an essential part of our daily lives, offering a wide range of useful and engaging responses. However, it’s not perfect and can sometimes produce “hallucinations”. Understanding these hallucinations is key to improving the reliability of your AI interactions.
By following our 4-step Reliable Response Strategy—customizing ChatGPT, using C.R.O.P prompts, employing incremental prompting, and leveraging Custom GPTs—you can significantly reduce these errors. This approach ensures that your conversations with ChatGPT are accurate, trustworthy, and more satisfying.
- Explore the customization settings to fine-tune ChatGPT for your specific needs,
- Use Clear, Rich in Context, Output-Indicated, and Precise prompts to guide ChatGPT.
- Break down complex questions into smaller, interconnected ones to build detailed information gradually.
- Create custom versions of ChatGPT to further tailor its responses to your needs.
We have spent months coming up with this perfect guide for you!
Get this Guide on Prompt Engineering here.
Have you experienced AI hallucinations with ChatGPT? Share your experiences and tips in the comments below!
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
AI hallucination – or ChatGPT hallucination – are those moments when the AI generates responses that sound correct but are actually wrong or nonsensical. These can range from small mistakes to completely made-up information. Understanding these hallucinations helps in developing strategies to minimize their occurrence and improve the reliability of AI-generated content.
AI models generate hallucinations due to several factors, including overconfidence in responses, ambiguous user queries, the complexity of natural language, and poorly constructed prompts. Understanding these factors allows for the development of strategies to reduce the frequency of hallucinations and improve AI performance.
Reducing hallucinations in ChatGPT involves a few strategic steps to ensure the AI provides accurate and reliable information. Here’s a quick guide based on the Hallucination-Buster Framework:
- Customize ChatGPT to Reduce Errors
You can tweak ChatGPT’s settings to enhance its accuracy. Add custom instructions that emphasize the importance of factual correctness and discourage guessing. This way, ChatGPT will be more likely to provide reliable responses and clearly state when it doesn’t have enough information.
- Use C.R.O.P. Prompts for Reliable Answers
Craft your questions using the C.R.O.P. method: Clear, Rich in Context, Output-Indicated, and Precise. This helps ChatGPT understand exactly what you’re looking for and provides more accurate responses. Clear and specific prompts reduce the likelihood of the AI generating irrelevant or incorrect information.
- Do Incremental Prompting for Building Information
Break down your queries into smaller, connected questions to build detailed information step-by-step. This method, known as incremental prompting, ensures that each response builds upon the previous one, leading to more accurate and comprehensive answers.
- Leverage the Power of Custom GPT
Create custom versions of ChatGPT tailored to your specific needs. By training a Custom GPT with specific datasets and regularly testing and refining it, you can reduce errors and ensure more relevant and accurate responses.
By following these steps, you can significantly reduce hallucinations and enjoy more reliable and useful interactions with ChatGPT.
While completely eliminating AI hallucinations is a challenging goal, the good news is that you can significantly reduce their occurrence! With advancements in AI technology and best practices for interacting with models like ChatGPT, hallucinations are becoming less frequent.
By customizing AI settings, using clear and specific prompts, employing incremental prompting, and leveraging custom AI models tailored to specific needs, you can greatly enhance the accuracy and reliability of AI responses. Think of it as fine-tuning a musical instrument – with the right adjustments, you can achieve harmony and precision.
So, while we may not be able to eradicate hallucinations entirely, the tools and techniques available today can bring us very close to a seamless and reliable AI experience.
Prompt engineering involves creating clear, specific, and well-structured prompts to guide AI models in generating accurate responses. By carefully crafting your queries, you can help the AI interpret them correctly, reducing the likelihood of hallucinations and improving the overall reliability of AI-generated content.
