Oh yes, I don't disagree, but in my recollection, the pitch and the hype was always about how they never create fake sources and fake citations, at the time when that was a problem.
You would go to it, but results showed much more work was needed - also in RAG. Which became a general focus in the community, for the many problem it may solve and the many it could help fixing. Some found better formulas for RAG, others swamped. Perplexity made it a flag, but in a factual large company. And the problem with "fake sources and citations" is still there, while mitigated in the full complex systems - hallucination is still a benchmarked effect in LLM ANNs, and blunders from excessive trust are still recorded.
You would go to it, but results showed much more work was needed - also in RAG. Which became a general focus in the community, for the many problem it may solve and the many it could help fixing. Some found better formulas for RAG, others swamped. Perplexity made it a flag, but in a factual large company. And the problem with "fake sources and citations" is still there, while mitigated in the full complex systems - hallucination is still a benchmarked effect in LLM ANNs, and blunders from excessive trust are still recorded.