Ungrounded internal consistency can produce fluent but factually unsupported AI outputs.

A review of academic literature and empirical studies identifies ungrounded internal consistency as a recognized pathway to AI hallucinations, where fluent, internally consistent generation overrides external evidence such as retrieved facts or perceptual data. This failure mode is one of several causes, not the sole explanation, for factually unsupported outputs in large language models.

The Short Version Fluent, internally consistent generation can produce hallucinations when it is not adequately constrained by external evidence. Academic reviews and empirical studies support this as one recognized failure pathway, particularly when learned linguistic priors override retrieved, factual, or perceptual information. It is not the only cause of AI hallucinations.