How to verify a quote: a step-by-step method

Step 1: start from the exact wording

Copy the quote exactly as it circulates, with the name of the person it is attributed to, the date and the place where you found it. Archive the page with a tool such as the Wayback Machine or Perma.cc. AFP Factuel archives both the posts it checks and its own evidence, in case a message is later edited or deleted.

Then search for the exact phrase, in quotation marks, in a search engine. AFP Factuel notes that pasting a paragraph into a search engine often shows whether it has already circulated online. Write down the earliest appearance you find, with its date.

Snopes describes the authentication of a quote as a process of elimination. It starts with searches for where and when the passage appeared on websites, in books, in periodicals and in historical archives, and for the people it was attributed to before.

Step 2: find the primary source

The primary source is the first record of the words. Depending on the case, it is an audio or video recording, an official transcript, the minutes of a meeting or the original text of a book, article or post.

• Speech or interview: find the full recording, then compare it with any transcript.
• Parliament, council or court: use the official record or the minutes published by the institution.
• Book or article: open the original publication and the edition cited. A translated work can exist in several editions.
• Social media post: find the person’s account and the original post, then archive it.

Take a fictional case. A post attributes a sentence about the factory closure to the mayor. The video of the municipal council session and its minutes come first, before any press article that repeats the sentence.

When a statement is attributed to a person, AFP Factuel looks for a reliable source, such as an audio or video recording or an official transcript. It also checks the person’s social media accounts and asks the person directly to confirm or deny the statement. The code of principles of the International Fact-Checking Network asks its signatories to use the best available primary sources, and to explain any use of secondary ones.

Step 3: check words, date, context and translation

Once you hold the primary source, compare it with the circulating version word by word.

• Words: a single changed word can reverse the meaning. A paraphrase placed between quotation marks becomes a false quote.
• Date: an accurate quote can be years old. The person may have changed position since, and the quote then describes a past position.
• Context: read or listen to what comes before and after. Check whether the person was answering a question, quoting someone else, making a hypothesis or speaking ironically.
• Translation: go back to the original language. Translate the passage again and tell the reader that the quote is translated.

The International Fact-Checking Network asks its signatories to let readers verify findings themselves. Keep the link, the timestamp in the recording or the page number in the document next to each quote you publish.

How to spot an invented or misattributed quote

Several signs call for more checking.

• No record before social media. Snopes notes that the absence of any record of a quote before the internet and social media strongly suggests that a statement credited to a long-dead figure is a fabrication or a modern misattribution.
• A different author. A quote can have a long, traceable history and still come from someone other than the person it is attributed to, according to Snopes.
• No date, place or link. The post gives no way to find the original.
• A quote on an image. The words circulate as text over a portrait, with no link to the original.

Snopes compares its results with the work of biographers, historians, author archives and presidential libraries. For a living person, AFP Factuel contacts the person or the organisation concerned. AFP Factuel also requires at least two independent sources to verify the central claim of an article.

Quotes produced by AI assistants

AI assistants can alter real quotes and produce quotes that do not exist. In a study published in February 2025, the BBC asked ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini and Perplexity questions about the news. BBC journalists found that 13% of the quotes sourced from BBC articles were either altered from the original or absent from the article cited.

The Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University tested eight AI search tools in March 2025. Researchers gave each tool an excerpt from a news article and asked for the headline, publisher, date and URL. Together, the tools gave incorrect answers to over 60% of queries, and most of the tools presented these wrong answers with confidence. In October 2025, a study coordinated by the European Broadcasting Union with 22 public service media organisations found serious sourcing problems in a third of AI answers.

A quote found only in an AI answer or summary stays unverified. The journalist treats it as a lead and looks for it in the primary source, following steps 1 to 3. The AI hallucination glossary entry explains why these errors occur.

When you cannot verify a quote

Some quotes cannot be confirmed before publication. The recording may be lost, or the person may not answer.

• Do not publish the words as a direct quote.
• Attribute the statement to the source that reports it, with the date.
• Tell the reader what you checked and what you could not find.
• Correct the article openly if the original appears later.

AFP Factuel explains the steps of each check, with links, screenshots and archived evidence, so that readers can reproduce the investigation. Signatories of the International Fact-Checking Network publish a corrections policy and correct their mistakes openly.

Verify quotes with Verbatim

Verbatim checks every quote in your text against its source. Each claim, whether a figure, a fact, a quote or an accusation, is matched with the exact extract of the document or recording it comes from. Verbatim marks it verified, contradicted, outdated or inconclusive and shows you the passage. A quote found only in an AI summary is never counted as verified. See source verification.

The agents also look for the primary source. The reading agent searches the web, public registers and up to 40,000 pages of documents, and answers with the exact page. Verbatim transcribes your interviews with separate voices and timestamped passages, and copies each quote word for word. The monitoring agent follows hundreds of sources day and night and flags any new document that changes your story, with the passage that proves it.

During an interview, Verbatim checks each sentence as it is spoken. When an answer contradicts the documents, the passage that proves it appears while the person is still speaking. See live fact-checking. Verbatim is hosted and processed in Europe, and your content is never used to train a third-party AI.

Sources

• AFP Factuel, How we work (in French)
• Snopes, How to authenticate quotes
• Poynter, International Fact-Checking Network, The commitments of the Code of Principles
• BBC, Representation of BBC News content in AI Assistants (February 2025)
• Columbia Journalism Review, Tow Center, AI Search Has a Citation Problem (March 2025)
• European Broadcasting Union, News Integrity in AI Assistants (October 2025)