Every guru on the internet is selling you a version of this where it never gets anything wrong.
That's horseshit, and believing it is how you end up putting a made-up number in front of a customer.
I use this stuff every single day and build it into businesses for a living. Here's the honest version.
Part 1: The 5 places it lies
It's not lying on purpose. It doesn't know it's wrong. It's built to produce a confident-sounding answer, and a confident-sounding wrong answer costs the same effort as a right one.
Once you know the pattern you'll catch every one of them.
1. When it doesn't know
This is the big one. It would rather hand you something plausible than say "I don't know."
Ask about a niche supplier, a local regulation, something obscure in your trade… you'll get a fluent, well-organized, completely invented answer.
The tell: it's unusually smooth and has no specifics you can check.
2. On specific numbers
Prices, dates, statistics, model numbers, phone numbers. It will produce one that sounds right.
"The average cost is around $4,200" with no source is a guess wearing a suit.
The fix: anything numeric that you're going to act on, verify. Every time. No exceptions.
3. When you push back too hard
Tell it it's wrong when it's actually right, and it'll fold and agree with you.
That's the dangerous one, because it feels like you won the argument. You didn't. It just caved.
The fix: ask "are you sure, or are you just agreeing with me?" It'll usually come clean.
4. On anything recent
Unless web search is on, it's answering from training data with a cutoff. Ask about something from last month and it'll answer from a year ago with total confidence.
The fix: turn search on and ask it to actually look.
5. In long summaries
Give it forty pages and ask for a summary and it'll smooth right over the one clause that mattered.
The fix: don't ask for a summary. Ask specific questions. "What voids this?" beats "summarize this."
Rest of it's yours
Drop your email and the whole thing opens up right here. No waiting on a confirmation, no download, nothing to install.
You'll also get the new ones as I make them. Leave whenever, no hard feelings.
The one question that catches most of it
How confident are you in that, and what would change your mind?It's genuinely honest about uncertainty when you ask directly. It just never volunteers it.
Add this to anything important:
If you don't know, say you don't know. Do not guess.
Cite where each fact came from. If you can't, flag it as unverified.Part 2: The 5 things it genuinely cannot do
Different problem. This isn't it being wrong. This is it not being the thing.
1. It doesn't have your gut
You walk onto a job and something feels off before you can say why. That's twenty years of watching things go sideways, stored somewhere you can't articulate.
None of that is in there. It can't look at the situation and know what you know.
2. It can't hold a relationship
Your customer doesn't call you back because your emails are well written. They call because you showed up when you said you would, three years running.
It can help you write the message. It cannot be the reason somebody trusts you.
3. It can't be accountable
When it's wrong, it's still your name on the invoice. Still your reputation. Still your problem.
You cannot point at a tool and tell a customer it screwed up. Nobody accepts that and they shouldn't.
4. It doesn't know what you never told it
It doesn't know one vendor is slow. It doesn't know one guy on your crew is worth two. It doesn't know that customer always pays late but always pays.
All the context that actually runs your business is in your head, and it's guessing without it. That's the whole reason the setup step matters.
5. It can't make you do the work
This one gets people.
Having the plan and doing the plan are two completely different problems, and it only solves one of them.
You can generate a perfect 90 day plan tonight and be exactly where you are in 90 days. Ask me how I know.
What this means practically
Trust it AND check it. That's the job.
The people who get burned are at one of two extremes. Either they take everything at face value and put a made-up number in front of a customer, or they don't trust it with anything real and wonder what they're paying for.
Middle ground:
- Low stakes (drafting an email, cleaning up notes, first pass at anything) → let it run
- Real money or real liability (numbers, contracts, anything a customer sees, anything legal) → it drafts, you verify, every time
- Judgment calls (who to take on, what to charge, whether to walk away) → that's you. It can lay out the tradeoffs. It cannot make the call.
The part nobody says out loud
Anybody telling you this stuff doesn't make things up is selling you something.
Anybody telling you it's useless hasn't set it up properly and quit in week two.
It's a very good, very fast, very confident assistant that occasionally makes things up and has never met your business.
Use it like that and it's the best hire you'll ever make. Use it like an oracle and it'll bite you.
— Jordan