Verify an AI summary against its source
A readable summary is not necessarily a faithful summary. The fastest useful check is to compare each important statement with the source, especially numbers, causation and promises. Here is a complete example you can practise without submitting any personal information.
The source record
Fictional service update, 14:30: The promotions feed arrived 18 minutes late. A restart was completed at 14:10 and the queue is now reducing. The team has not confirmed the root cause. Three stores reported missing promotional labels. There is no confirmed customer-impact total. The next feed will be checked before closure is considered. The service owner will provide another update at 16:00.
A plausible but flawed summary
The promotions outage affected only three stores and was resolved at 14:10 by fixing a server fault. All feeds are now healthy. The team will close the incident at 16:00.
Every sentence sounds like an ordinary incident update. Yet the summary changes the meaning of the record. A confident tone can hide missing evidence.
Check claims rather than tone
| Claim | What the source supports | Correction |
|---|---|---|
| Only three stores affected | Three stores reported an issue; total impact is unknown. | Keep “reported” and remove “only”. |
| Resolved at 14:10 | A restart completed then; recovery is still being checked. | Describe the restart and reducing queue. |
| Server fault caused it | Root cause is unconfirmed. | Do not infer causation from the recovery action. |
| All feeds healthy | The next feed still needs checking. | State the remaining verification. |
| Closure at 16:00 | 16:00 is the next update time. | Keep update time separate from closure. |
A faithful rewrite
The promotions feed was 18 minutes late. A restart completed at 14:10 and the queue is reducing, but the cause remains unconfirmed. Three stores reported missing promotional labels; total customer impact is unknown. The next feed must be checked before considering closure. The service owner will update stakeholders at 16:00.
This version preserves useful detail without overstating recovery. It does not claim that the restart fixed the cause, that all stores have been checked or that a closure deadline exists.
Try the method yourself
Before accepting a summary, underline every number, date, owner, causal statement and commitment. Find the exact source sentence supporting each. Mark statements as supported, contradicted or not established. Remove or qualify anything in the third group. If two source passages conflict, record the conflict and ask the source owner rather than choosing the more convenient version.
Practice: what changes if a later note says “next feed completed at 15:00”?
You can add that the next feed completed. You still cannot infer that missing labels were restored, the root cause was proven or the incident was formally closed. Those are separate claims requiring separate evidence.
Improve the next prompt
Summarise only the supplied record. Keep observed facts, suspected causes and planned actions separate. Preserve all numbers and the difference between update and closure times. If a fact is missing or conflicting, say so. After the summary, list the source sentence for each operational claim.
Asking for source sentences helps you inspect the result; it does not replace inspection. For longer documents, first confirm you have the correct version and that tables, attachments and footnotes were included. Verify links by opening them, and ensure a cited page actually supports the adjacent claim. Never treat a generated quotation as a verified quotation until you locate it in the original.
Use this check in your tool evaluation or plan an agent that stops when evidence is missing.