How to Fact-Check AI-Written Articles Before You Publish

To fact-check an AI-written article, list every specific fact in the draft (numbers, names, dates, quotes, links, product specs), trace each one to the primary source that published it, and delete or rewrite anything you cannot confirm. Then hand the business-specific facts, such as lead times, minimum order quantities and certifications, to the person in your company who actually knows them. Finally, check the title, meta description, structured data and image alt text with the same care as the body.

This guide turns that process into a repeatable checklist for B2B manufacturers, exporters and the marketers who write for them.

Why AI drafts need their own fact-check

AI drafts fail in a specific way: they sound confident whether or not they are right. Google's guidance on using generative AI content explains the cause plainly: generative models "don't retrieve facts, but predict a likely sequence of words based on their training data," so their output may contain inaccuracies. The same page says it is "critical to manually factcheck and review all AI-generated content for accuracy and trustworthiness before publishing."

The US National Institute of Standards and Technology describes the same risk in its Generative AI Profile (NIST AI 600-1, July 2024). It calls it "confabulation": generative systems that "generate and confidently present erroneous or false content." NIST also notes that outputs can include confabulated citations that make a wrong answer look justified.

For a manufacturer, the cost of a wrong fact is not abstract. A buyer who spots an invented test standard, a wrong tolerance or a made-up statistic in your blog has a reason to doubt your quotation too. A human writer who does not know something usually leaves a gap. An AI model usually fills the gap with something plausible. That is why the check has to be its own step, not part of a quick proofread.

Step 1: Mark every checkable fact in the draft

Before you edit wording, read the draft once and highlight everything that could be true or false. Polishing a sentence that should be deleted wastes time, so fact-check first and style-edit second.

Type of fact	Typical AI failure	How to check it
Statistics and percentages	Invented, rounded, or taken from a secondhand article that distorted the original	Find the original report, survey or dataset and the exact sentence
Named sources ("a study by…")	The study does not exist, or says something different	Open the source; confirm the title, publisher and year
Dates and versions	Confuses announced, released and available; uses stale data	Check the official announcement, changelog or standard
Names, job titles, companies	Outdated or invented people and roles	Check the organisation's own website
Quotes	Paraphrases presented as exact quotes, or invented quotes	Find the exact wording in the original interview, document or page
Standards and regulations	Wrong standard number, wrong edition, wrong scope	Check the standards body or regulator's own page
Links	Broken, irrelevant, or pointing to a page that does not support the sentence	Open every link and read the surrounding text
Your own business facts	Guessed MOQ, lead time, capacity, certification or price	Ask the owner of that fact inside your company

Example: an AI draft about stainless steel fasteners states a salt-spray test duration for a particular grade and attributes it to a named ISO standard. That one sentence contains four separate facts: a standard number, a grade, a test method and a number of hours. Each needs checking against the standard itself or the standards body's own information. If you cannot confirm the figure, rewrite the sentence without it.

Step 2: Trace each fact to its primary source

The rule is simple: confirm a fact at the source that originally published it, not at an article that repeats it.

• Statistics: find the original report and read the sentence containing the number. Confirm what was actually measured, the sample, and the year. "Some respondents said X" and "most companies do X" are different statements.
• Regulations and standards: use the regulator or standards body, not a blog summary.
• Search and platform rules: use the platform's own documentation, for example Google Search Central for search guidance.
• Company facts about others: use the company's own website or press releases.

If you cannot find the original within a few minutes, treat that as the answer. Delete the number or rewrite the sentence qualitatively. "Many buyers compare suppliers on lead time" is less exciting than an invented percentage, but it is true and it does not put your credibility at risk.

Watch for these warning signs in the draft:

• "Studies show" or "research indicates" with no study named.
• Very precise numbers (such as 37.4%) with no report, year or sample size attached.
• Superlatives such as "industry-leading" or "the most widely used" with no evidence.
• Recent-sounding facts about prices, people or product versions. These change often and are exactly what a model's training data gets wrong.

If a statistic is accurate but old, keep it only if it is still relevant, and say how old it is, for example "(2023 survey)".

Step 3: Open every link the draft cites

AI drafts often include links. Do not assume they work or that they support the sentence they are attached to. Check two things separately:

1. The link loads and goes to the page you expect, not a redirect, a homepage or an error page.
2. The page actually says what your sentence says. Find the specific passage. If the source says something weaker or different, change your sentence to match the source, or remove it.

While you are there, check who publishes the source. For B2B articles, prefer official documentation, standards bodies, regulators, government statistics and recognised industry associations. Avoid linking competitors, even when their article is the first search result, and avoid sources that are themselves quoting someone else.

Step 4: Check quotes, testimonials and named people

Quotes are the highest-risk item in an AI draft, because a wrong quote puts words in a real person's mouth.

• Search for the exact wording in quotation marks. If it does not appear in a traceable interview, press release, filing or document, do not present it as a quote. Paraphrase the idea with a sourced link, or remove it.
• Confirm that any named expert exists, holds the role stated, and is connected to the organisation the draft names.
• Never let an AI draft invent customer testimonials or reviews. In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission's final rule on fake reviews and testimonials (announced 14 August 2024) addresses reviews and testimonials by "someone who does not exist, such as AI-generated fake reviews." Rules differ by market, but an invented customer is a bad idea anywhere.

A hedge such as "reportedly said" does not fix an invented quote. If you cannot find it, it does not go in.

Step 5: Send business facts to the people who know them

Some facts cannot be checked on the internet at all, because only your company knows them. These are often the facts buyers care about most, and an AI model will happily guess them.

Business fact	Who should confirm it
Minimum order quantity (MOQ)	Sales or export manager
Lead time and production capacity	Production or planning
Certifications held and their scope	Quality manager, checked against the current certificate
Materials, grades, tolerances, test results	Engineering or quality
Prices, payment terms, Incoterms	Sales manager or owner
Customer names, case studies, export markets	Owner or sales, with customer permission where needed
Warranty and after-sales terms	Owner or customer service

Example: a draft for a valve manufacturer says "all our valves are CE marked and ship in 15 days." Your quality manager confirms that only one product line is CE marked, and production says 15 days applies to stock items only. The corrected sentence names the product line and says "stock items typically ship within 15 days; made-to-order lead times are confirmed on quotation."

Make this a written handoff: a short list of open questions sent to each owner, with the article held until they answer. Do not publish a guessed business fact "for now" and fix it later.

Step 6: Check metadata, structured data and alt text

The parts of a page that readers see in search results need the same review as the body. Google's generative AI guidance says the manual review also applies to metadata: title elements, meta descriptions, structured data and image alt text, all of which can appear in search results.

• Title and meta description: do they promise anything the article does not deliver, such as a number of tips, a price or a guarantee?
• Structured data: Google's general structured data guidelines say markup "must be a true representation of the page content," should be up to date, and should not mark up content that is not visible to readers. Check any product, FAQ or organisation markup against the visible page.
• Image alt text: Google's image SEO guidance says it uses alt text, together with computer vision and page content, to understand an image. Alt text should describe the image that is actually on the page, not one the AI imagined.

Image: Bastian Riccardi via Pexels, Pexels License

The pre-publish checklist

Copy this list into your editorial template. A draft does not move to "ready to publish" until every line is done.

• Every statistic is traced to the original report, with year and context confirmed.
• Every named study, standard, regulation and organisation has been opened at its official source.
• Every link has been opened, and the linked page supports the sentence it is attached to.
• Every direct quote has been found in its original source, or rewritten as a sourced paraphrase.
• No invented customers, testimonials, reviews or experts remain.
• Business facts (MOQ, lead time, certifications, specs, prices, terms) are confirmed in writing by their owner.
• Old data is labelled with its year.
• Title, meta description, structured data and alt text match the final article.
• Anything that could not be confirmed has been removed or rewritten, not hedged.
• A named person has signed off.

Example time budget: for a 1,500-word draft with sources already attached, most of the work is confirmation rather than research. A draft with no sources takes far longer, because the checker has to find where every fact came from. The single biggest time saver is requiring sources at the drafting stage.

Who should own the final sign-off

Give final sign-off to one named person, not "the team." In a small manufacturer this is usually the marketing lead or the owner. Their job is not to re-check every fact personally, but to confirm the checklist was actually completed and that business facts were confirmed by the right people. For technical topics such as materials, safety or compliance, add a second sign-off from engineering or quality.

Keep a simple record for each article: the date it was checked, who checked it, and which facts were confirmed by whom. When a buyer or colleague questions a detail later, you can answer quickly, and you know which articles to review when a standard or price changes.

If you want help with the repetitive parts, Blogo automates topic choice, research, source-checking and WordPress drafts, flags business facts for your team to confirm, and leaves every publish decision to a person.

FAQ

How do I know if an AI-generated statistic is real? Find the original report or dataset and read the sentence that contains the number. Confirm the figure, the year and what was measured. If you cannot find the original within a few minutes, remove the number or rewrite the sentence without it.

Can I trust the links an AI draft includes? Not without opening them. Check that each link loads, goes to the expected page, and actually supports the sentence it is attached to. These are two separate checks.

Does Google require me to fact-check AI content? Google's generative AI content guidance says it is critical to manually fact-check and review all AI-generated content for accuracy and trustworthiness before publishing, including metadata. Whatever search engines do, an error under your company name is a trust problem with buyers.

Which facts can only my team confirm? Anything specific to your business: MOQ, lead times, capacity, certifications and their scope, materials and tolerances, prices, payment terms, warranties and customer references. Send these to the person responsible and hold the article until they confirm in writing.

What should I do with a quote I cannot verify? Remove it, or replace it with a sourced paraphrase of what the person or organisation actually published. Adding "reportedly" does not make an unverifiable quote safe.