It never was, but unlike the current batch of LLM assistants that are now dominating the tops of "search" results, it never claimed to be. It was more, "here's what triggered our algorithm as "relevant." Figure out your life, human."

Now, instead, you have a paragraph of natural text that will literally tell you all about cities that don't exist and confidently assert that bestiality is celebrated in Washington DC because someone wrote popular werewolf slash fanfic set in Washington state. Teach the LLMs some fucking equivocation and this problem is immediately reduced, but then it makes it obvious that these things aren't Majel Barrett in Star Trek and they've been pushed out much too quickly.

What I have seen like duckAI in duckduckgo search it cites references and if you query GPT and other models with the specific data your looking towards it will cite and give links to where it sourced the input from like PubMed. Etc.

For instance I will query with something like give me a list of flowers that are purple, cite all sources and ensure accuracy of data provided by cross referencing with other studies while using previous chats as context.

I find it's about how you type your queries and logic. Once you understand how the models work rather than blindly accepting them as supreme AI then you understand it's limits and how to utilize the tool for what they are.