Factuality challenges in the era of large language models and opportunities for fact-checking

The emergence of tools based on large language models (LLMs), such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, has garnered immense public attention owing to their advanced natural language generation capabilities. These remarkably natural-sounding tools have the potential to be highly useful for various tasks. However, they also tend to produce false, erroneous or misleading content—commonly referred to as hallucinations. Moreover, LLMs can be misused to generate convincing, yet false, content and profiles on a large scale, posing a substantial societal challenge by potentially deceiving users and spreading inaccurate information. This makes fact-checking increasingly important. Despite their issues with factual accuracy, LLMs have shown proficiency in various subtasks that support fact-checking, which is essential to ensure factually accurate responses. In light of these concerns, we explore issues related to factuality in LLMs and their impact on fact-checking. We identify key challenges, imminent threats and possible solutions to these factuality issues. We also thoroughly examine these challenges, existing solutions and potential prospects for fact-checking. By analysing the factuality constraints within LLMs and their impact on fact-checking, we aim to contribute to a path towards maintaining accuracy at a time of confluence of generative artificial intelligence and misinformation.