I would bet that for most people they define the words like:

Hallucination - something that isn't real

Confabulation - a word that they have never heard of

It's also equally wrong. Lying implies intent. Stop anthropomorphising language models.

For instance, if you give AI a photo and ask it to describe in detail what it seems, it will often report things that aren’t there. That’s not confabulation, that’s hallucination. But if you ask a general knowledge question with no additional context and it responds with something untrue, then that would be confabulation, I agree.

That battle is both lost and irrelevant. Don’t confuse accurate word usage with effective communication, most people don’t understand the nuance between hallucination and confabulation nor do they care. Even if you convinced everyone in the world to start using “confabulation” right now, nothing would change.

You’re doing a disservice to your own cause by insisting on this pointless weak distinction. If you truly want to make a point about the issue with LLMs in a way anyone outside of HN might pay attention, suggest a simpler and stronger word people already know: “lying”, “bullshitting”, …

You can surely object to those suggestions: “LLMs don’t lie. That would require active deception which they are incapable of, being statistical token generators”. Which is true, but:

1. There are plenty of people who both believe LLMs are intelligent and capable of deception.

2. For everyone else, “bullshitted” is no more inaccurate than “hallucinated” yet still conveys a stronger urgency and required care of operation.