Which AI gives the right answers? Librarians helped us put them to the test.

Lots of artificial intelligence tools claim they can answer any question. Except sometimes they are hilariously, or even dangerously, wrong. So which AI is most likely to give you a correct answer?

To find out, I enlisted some professional help: librarians. We set up a competition between nine AI tools, asking each AI to answer 30 tough research questions. Then the librarians judged the AI answers — and whether an old-fashioned Google web search might have been sufficient.