Stat Trace: find where a number in an AI answer came from

Checking claims in AI answers is already crowded. At least eight Chrome extensions (ScrutinyAI, Fact It, Theia, Verifi, Verol, Verity and others) give verdicts on ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini output. Pre-publish checkers for marketers also exist: GPTZero Source Finder, Originality.ai, LongShot and Fractal. A plain "is this number supported by a source" product would be a commodity, and GPTZero and Originality already have distribution with this exact buyer. I found nothing that does the specific job in this idea. That job is finding the earliest page where a figure appeared, telling independent sources apart from pages that copied each other, and flagging stats that come from one source or that cite each other in a loop. Existing tools answer whether some page supports the claim. That is the weak spot for zombie stats, because a fake figure usually has dozens of supporting pages that all lead back to one vendor blog. A new entrant could win by being the provenance tool rather than a fact-checker. It would show the citation chain, the first date the number appeared and an independence count, plus a public feed of debunked stats as a marketing and data advantage. The risks are cost and accuracy. Finding the earliest appearance means searching for the figure in many forms and using archive dates, which is expensive and often uncertain. Incumbents could also add a "trace to origin" feature if the idea gets traction. The paid market for writers is real but price-sensitive.

• GPTZero Source Finder

  Finds the checkable claims in pasted text, matches them to web and academic sources, marks each claim as supported or contradicted, and exports citations. It has a large existing user base. It finds a source but does not look for the earliest one or count how many sources are independent.

• Originality.ai Fact & AI Hallucination Checker

  Flags statements that may be false, explains why and links sources. It is sold to content marketers before publishing, which overlaps directly with the Draft check idea.

• LongShot Fact Check & Cite

  Takes pasted text or a document, detects the claims, labels whether they are accurate, links supporting sources and can swap in corrections. It is aimed at SEO writers.

• Fractal Fact Check Agent

  An editing agent that picks out stats, dates and quotes that need checking and verifies them against a source index.

• ScrutinyAI

  Chrome extension that pulls the claims out of ChatGPT answers and gives each a web-backed verdict: source confirmed, externally supported, contradicted, or differing view.

• Fact It

  New extension that underlines factual claims in ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini answers while they stream, with a supported, partial or contradicted signal.

• Theia

  Extension that fact-checks ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini answers and links the sources behind each verdict.

• Verifi AI

  Extension that fact-checks AI answers in real time with sources and confidence scores. It is tiny, with about nine users.

• Verol

  Marks risky claims inline in ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Grok answers with color-coded indicators.

• Verity

  Gives each claim a badge (verified, wrong, partially verified or unverifiable) with a link to its source.

• Citely Source Finder

  Matches pasted text to its original source, mostly in academic databases. It is the closest to tracing a claim back to where it started, but it is built for academic citations, not web statistics.

• StoryTracer

  Chrome extension that follows a news page's outbound links to guess where the original reporting came from. It traces whole stories, not individual numbers.

Checked 2026-10-21