You can actually ask ChatGPT to cite its sources. Anecdotally when I tried, it provided me with a valid url to a census.gov site that contained the answer to my question. That doesn't make it better than google, but it does mean that some verification is possible.
it will, very frequently, make up citations with real looking but completely bogus urls.
it is NOT a research tool. It is a creative text generation tool. It is not programmed to provide accurate data. It's programmed to provide accurate sounding text.
Actually just today I asked if for the density of silicon nitrite and to cite a source. It cave a citation that seemed correct (reference book on materials) but with completely made up authors.
