You immediately start from a better place using an LLM vs searching raw. If I just need a link, I use DDG. When I need to research, I ask the latest gpt4-turbo model.

If I ask an LLM something like “is there a git project that does <something I’d describe in natural language but not keywords>” or is there a Windows program that does X, it may make up the answers

Obviously it depends on the LLM, but ChatGPT Plus doesn’t hallucinate with your example. What it does is provide a list of git projects / windows programs, each with a short summary and a link to the official website.

And the summary doesn’t come from the website — the summary is a short description of how it matches your requirements list.

I’ve also noticed Bing has started showing LLM summaries for search results. For example I’ve typed a question into Duck Duck Go (which uses Bing internally) and seen links to reddit where the answer is “a user answered your question stating X, and another user disagreed saying Y”.

I’m encountering hallucinations far less often now than I used to - at least with OpenAI based products.

That’s a really good use case that I will need to start using. In a use case such as that where paid ads make the search engines unreliable, the LLM is at least going to be on the same footing if not better.