Why an AI keeps repeating something false about you
Hallucinations and name confusion are reputation problems, not glitches. What causes them and what actually reduces them.
The claim is not in any source
You ask an assistant about yourself and it states something that is simply untrue: a sanction you never received, a company you never worked for, a legal matter belonging to a stranger who shares your name.
This is not vandalism and there is no page to point at. The model is filling a gap with a plausible-sounding guess, or blending two people with similar names into one profile.
Why it happens to some people and not others
Three conditions make it far more likely:
- **A thin footprint.** Little authoritative material about you exists, so the model has nothing solid to anchor to.
- **A common name.** Especially when someone else with your name has a documented negative record.
- **Ambiguous context.** Your city, employer, credential, and field are not consistently stated in the same places.
The fix follows directly from the causes.
Reducing hallucinations in practice
- **Be unambiguous everywhere.** Name, city, field, credential, and current role stated consistently across every page about you.
- **Give the model something better.** Substantive, indexable pages that answer the obvious questions about who you are.
- **Differentiate from your namesake.** Specific, verifiable details are what let an engine tell you apart.
- **Recheck on a cycle.** Answers change as retrieval changes. A claim that disappears this month can return next month.
Read the answer before you argue with it
Most people have never actually read what the major assistants say about them. Start there. Mirror.fyi captures the answers across engines, scores them, and turns the gaps into a work plan you execute.