What should I do if an AI assistant says something wrong about my business?
Short answer
Correct the fact at its source, because you can't edit the answer itself. Save the exact prompt and reply, look for the same error on your website, your Google Business Profile and your directory listings, fix every copy, and flag the reply using the assistant's feedback option. Then ask the same question again over the following weeks.
If an AI assistant says something wrong about your business, save the answer, find the place on the web where the wrong fact lives, and correct it there. An assistant has no owner login the way a Google Business Profile does, so you can’t open the reply and edit it. The effort belongs with the information the reply was built from, which you can change.
Record exactly what was said
You’ll need something to compare against later, so note the assistant, the date, the exact wording of your question, the full reply and any sources it displayed. Then ask the same question several more times in new conversations, since AI assistants give different answers each time. An error that turns up once in five tries is a different problem from one that turns up every time.
Work out where the wrong fact comes from
The error usually exists somewhere on the web, and the assistant is repeating it. An assistant can answer in two broad ways: from what the model absorbed when it was trained, or by searching the web at the moment you ask. If the reply shows sources, open each one and look for the mistake. If it shows none, search for the wrong detail yourself, for example the old phone number in quotation marks.
| What the assistant got wrong | Where I’d look first |
|---|---|
| Old phone number, address or hours | Directory listings you forgot about, old pages on your own site, your Google Business Profile |
| A service you don’t offer | Directory categories chosen years ago, a service page you never removed |
| Mixed up with another company | Businesses with a similar name, in San Diego County or elsewhere |
| A negative claim | Review sites, complaint sites and forum threads |
Sometimes there’s no source to find. Generative models can produce a confident statement that appears nowhere. In that case the remedy is the same, only slower: make the correct fact easy to find and stated the same way in many places.
Correct every copy
Fix your own website first, since it’s the one source you fully control. State the correct fact in plain text on the page, not inside an image. Then correct your Google Business Profile, then each directory listing that carries the error. One wrong listing left standing can keep the mistake alive, which is why cleaning up citations (the listings of your name, address and phone number on other sites) is part of this job. Where two businesses are being confused, the aim of entity and structured data work is to make yours unmistakable.
Most assistants also have a way to flag a reply, such as a thumbs-down or a report link. Use it and state the correct fact briefly. I can’t tell you what happens to that feedback, so treat it as worth a minute and not as the fix.
How long a correction takes
Nobody outside the AI companies can give you a date. A reply built from a live web search can change soon after the source page is corrected and read again. A reply that comes from training can persist until the model itself is updated, and that schedule isn’t yours or mine to set. So the practical step is to measure: I run the same prompts again about two weeks after a change, compare the replies with the record from day one, and keep going until the error stops appearing.
If the statement is damaging
Keep dated screenshots and report it through the product’s own feedback or support channel. Suppose an assistant told people a hypothetical Escondido plumbing company had closed, or was unlicensed. That’s more serious than a stale phone number, and if you believe it has cost you work, an attorney is the right person to ask about your options. I can’t give legal advice. My part is to trace the claim to its likely source and get the correct facts published where assistants can find them.