On October 19, 2026 we asked ChatGPT and Google AI Mode basic company questions. None of the 86 answers was invented, and the five that missed were all spots where public sources disagree with each other.
What we asked, through a data provider's live feeds of both engines: founding year and HQ for 26 real software companies, the cheapest paid plan's monthly price for 8 SaaS tools (checked against each vendor's pricing page that day), and the price and founder of 9 software brands we made up.
Famous companies came back 19 of 20 matching the source, mid-sized ones 14 of 14, little-known ones 14 of 18. Headline prices were 16 of 16. For the made-up brands, all 18 answers said they couldn't find the product, and none invented a price or a founder.
ChatGPT said it couldn't verify the product and asked for a website every time. Google AI Mode said no such product existed, and often suggested a real brand with a similar name, like a cosplay design brand called Thimble Forge. We started with 10 invented names and dropped one, because ChatGPT found an HR document product called Corvanta and AI Mode found an ambulance software brand.
The five misses: DBmaestro, where ChatGPT said 2008 off an Israeli startup database and Wikipedia and AI Mode said 2012. Lexalytics, where both engines said Amherst and Wikipedia says Boston. xTuple, where ChatGPT said Norfolk, its old home, and Wikipedia lists Lincoln, Rhode Island. Canva, where ChatGPT said 2012 and AI Mode said 2013, and both explained it started work in 2012 and launched in 2013.
Prices only slipped in the fine print. Capsule CRM's monthly-billing price was $22 from ChatGPT, citing two review sites, and $21 from AI Mode, and the vendor's page shows the annual price by default.
For contrast, Vectara's hallucination leaderboard (October 16 update, 109 models) has OpenAI's GPT-5.4 nano at 3.1% and o3-pro at 23.3%. That board hands models documents and asks for a summary, so it's a different job.
We asked each question once, from one US location, on one day, and every question had one right answer.
Ram writes about this for RankControl, an AI SEO and AEO platform. RankControl's free AI Visibility Checker shows whether ChatGPT cites your site. The full numbers, with the Vectara and Artificial Analysis charts, are in the write-up.