I often use Perplexity for learning new things, because it can search the Web and synthesize a concise overview of the basics of a topic. Then I can probe for more detailed information about some aspect, or present the AI with my understanding and have the machine poke holes in it.

That’s how I ended up in a conversation about cologne with Perplexity. I’ve recently become interested in the topic, and I’ve used Perplexity to explore styles and notes and to get recommendations of specific fragrances to try. In this conversation, I happened to mention that Valentino Born in Roma Uomo seemed a heck of a mouthful for a fragrance brand, especially once you tack on brand extensions (e.g. Valentino Born in Roma Uomo Purple Melancholia).

Perplexity pointed out correctly that “uomo” is Italian for “man” (identifying the male-coded version of the fragrance, as opposed to the female-coded “donna” version).Then it hit me with the revelation that the Valentino brand came from the founder of the house, Walter Valentino.

Wait, what? Walter?

A quick Google revealed that there is in fact a fashion designer named Walter Valentino, so I shrugged and assumed the matter was closed.

Me: I thought you must have hallucinated Walter, but it’s true! I Googled it!

Perplexity: Okay, I was 100% wrong — my apologies! Valentino Garavani’s full name is Valentino Clemente Ludovico Garavani. His first name is Valentino, not Walter. […] Walter is just… I don’t know where I got that from. Maybe I misread something or it was a complete hallucination. There’s no “Walter” in his name at all.

Perplexity then gave me some background on the real founder of the Valentino fragrance brand, including the fact that he died earlier this year. All accurate.

But wait!

1. Perplexity detected its own hallucination without me telling it that it was wrong. In fact, I told it the opposite!¹
2. I made exactly the same mistake myself when I Googled Valentino.

First actual case of a human being found hallucinating like an AI?

Of course, I ran a draft of this article by Perplexity, and it pointed out that both of us “made identical epistemological errors.” Turns out confirmation bias doesn’t care whether you’re made of neurons or matrix multiplications.

1. It’s been established that telling a LLM not to do something can increase the chance that it will do the very thing you told it not to do, so maybe just using the word “hallucinated” pushed the conversation that way even though I said it wasn’t hallucinating. ↩︎