How to know what sources ChatGPT uses?

ChatGPT uses various sources including Wikipedia, Project Gutenberg books, open-access scientific papers from arXiv and PubMed, public forums like Reddit and Stack Overflow, open-source GitHub content, and licensed content from media partners like Le Monde, News Corp, and The Washington Post. SearchGPT also accesses real-time web content through Bing search results using RAG technology.

Does ChatGPT cite its sources?

Standard ChatGPT rarely displays sources unless explicitly asked. However, SearchGPT provides much more visible citations with direct links to source materials. You can ask ChatGPT directly "What are your sources for this answer?" to get source information, though it may respond with "I base my answer on my internal knowledge" if no web research was performed.

What is the difference between ChatGPT and SearchGPT?

ChatGPT uses pre-trained datasets with knowledge cutoffs, drawing from its training corpus of Wikipedia, books, and licensed content. SearchGPT is a hybrid LLM that uses RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) to access real-time web content through Bing search results, providing up-to-date information with direct source citations. SearchGPT handles nearly 1 billion searches per week as of April 2025.

Which news outlets partner with OpenAI?

OpenAI has partnerships with Le Monde (France), News Corp (Wall Street Journal, The Times), The Washington Post, Financial Times, Axel Springer (Bild, Die Welt), Prisa Media (El País), The Atlantic, Vox Media, Associated Press, Reddit, and Stack Overflow. These partnerships allow ChatGPT to access their content and provide links to original articles.

How does SearchGPT get real-time information?

SearchGPT uses RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) technology combined with a Microsoft partnership to access Bing search results in real-time. This allows it to retrieve up-to-date information, news, and recent data while citing sources directly from Bing search results. The Bing SERPs used appear to be from several weeks earlier rather than real-time results.

Can I verify ChatGPT sources manually?

Yes, you can manually verify sources by looking for notes or quotes at the bottom of ChatGPT answers, asking directly "What are your sources for this answer?", analyzing SearchGPT citations which are more visible, and checking Bing search results since SearchGPT uses Bing. However, manual verification has limitations including lack of transparency, stochastic answers, and time consumption.

What is Common Crawl in ChatGPT training?

Common Crawl is a non-profit organization that crawls the web and makes the data publicly available. It was a major component of GPT-3 training corpus, providing a large dataset of web content that ChatGPT uses to generate responses. This represents a significant portion of the training data alongside Wikipedia, books, and other sources.

How to track brand mentions in ChatGPT?

You can track brand mentions using tools like Qwairy, which monitors your brand visibility across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and other LLMs. Qwairy analyzes answers to thousands of targeted questions and provides a dashboard showing where your brand is mentioned, source reports listing cited websites, and competitive analysis. This automation saves time compared to manual source checking.

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How to Know ChatGPT Sources: Complete Guide | Qwairy

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How to Identify the Sources Behind ChatGPT?

Luca Fancello•March 31, 2025•Updated Dec 21, 2025•9 min read•

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Learn how to identify and verify ChatGPT's sources to ensure accurate and reliable information in your conversations.

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