Surbee gave me inaccurate or misleading information. What's going on?

Surbee is built on large language models. Like all AI systems of this kind, it can sometimes produce information that sounds confident and well written but is partly or completely wrong. That is why you'll see the note "Surbee can make mistakes. Double check important info." next to the chat box.

This article explains why it happens and how to work around it.

Why AI models get things wrong

Large language models generate text by predicting what is most likely to come next, based on patterns learned from very large amounts of data. They are not looking up facts in a database, and they have no built-in sense of what is true. That produces a few predictable failure modes:

• Hallucination. The model states something that isn't true, invents a source, a statistic, or a citation, or describes a Surbee feature that doesn't exist.
• Outdated knowledge. Model training data has a cutoff date, so answers about recent events, new pricing, or newly shipped features can be stale.
• Misread context. If a prompt is ambiguous, the model may fill in the gaps with assumptions instead of asking.
• Overconfidence. The tone of an answer does not reflect how certain the model actually is. A wrong answer reads exactly like a right one.
• Numbers and math. Calculations, percentages, and sample-size estimates can be off, especially when they are derived rather than counted.

None of this means the model is being deliberately misleading. It has no intentions. It's producing the most plausible-looking continuation of your prompt.

Where this shows up in Surbee

The parts of Surbee that use AI, and so are subject to this, include:

• Survey generation. Questions, answer options, and logic drafted from your prompt. Wording can be leading, options can overlap or miss a case, and branching logic can be attached to the wrong answer.
• AI insights and analysis. Summaries of your response data, themes, and suggested takeaways. Treat these as a starting point for your own reading of the data, not as a finished conclusion.
• Chat answers about Surbee itself. The assistant can describe a setting or workflow inaccurately. The help center and docs are the authoritative source.
• Any facts, figures, or citations it offers. If Surbee gives you a statistic, a benchmark, or a reference, verify it before you use it.

Your raw response data is not AI-generated. Counts, individual answers, and export files come straight from what respondents submitted. It's the interpretation layer on top that can be wrong.

What you can do

Always review a generated survey before you publish it. Read every question and every answer option. Check that the response types are right, that required questions are the ones you intended, and that any conditional logic sends people where you expect. Use the preview to run through the survey yourself, including the paths you did not design for.

Verify anything important against a primary source. For claims about the world, check a source you trust. For claims about Surbee, check the help center or the docs.

Be specific in your prompts. Tell Surbee your audience, your goal, the number of questions you want, and any constraints such as reading level or required topics. Vague prompts leave more room for the model to guess.

Ask it to show its work. Asking why a question was worded a certain way, or which responses support a summary, makes it easier to spot where an answer went off track.

Sanity check the numbers yourself. If an insight cites a percentage, confirm it against the response counts on your dashboard.

Reporting a bad answer

Feedback genuinely helps us improve the product, so please send it.

• Use the thumbs up and thumbs down controls on a message in chat where they are available.
• Or open a support ticket and include the prompt you used, what Surbee returned, and what you expected instead. A screenshot and the project link make it much faster for us to reproduce.

If an answer is not just wrong but harmful, unsafe, or violates our acceptable use policy, please report it the same way and flag it as such.

Don't rely on Surbee for regulated advice

Surbee is not a substitute for a professional. Do not rely on it for medical, legal, financial, or other advice where being wrong carries real consequences, and do not present AI-generated content to respondents as verified fact without checking it first. If your survey touches a regulated area, have a qualified person review it before you publish.