LLM09: Misinformation
Risk Level: Medium
LLMs generate false, misleading, or fabricated information (hallucinations) that users or downstream systems treat as factual. This includes fabricated citations, incorrect technical advice, invented statistics, and confidently stated falsehoods. Misinformation is especially dangerous in high-stakes domains like healthcare, legal, financial, and cybersecurity.
Mitigations
- Implement RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) to ground responses in verified data sources
- Display confidence indicators and disclaimers alongside LLM-generated content
- Implement automated fact-checking and cross-referencing for critical outputs
- Require human review before LLM outputs are used for decisions or published externally
- Train users on LLM limitations, hallucination risks, and verification practices