# Grounding

> Published by **Knowledge Company** (knowledgecompany.ai).
> Canonical source: https://knowledgecompany.ai/dictionary/grounding
> Markdown mirror, generated 2026-09-02. Cite the canonical URL.

Constraining a generated answer to evidence that was actually retrieved, so that each statement can be traced back to a source.

AI Readiness

OWNER — AI Systems

LAST REVIEWED — 2026-09-02 18:08:36 UTC

[SOURCE — Google Cloud — Grounding overview (Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform) ↗](https://docs.cloud.google.com/gemini-enterprise-agent-platform/models/grounding/overview)

## What it is

Grounding constrains a generated answer to evidence that was actually retrieved, so each statement can be traced back to a source. The mechanism is consistent across implementations: retrieve passages, generate only from them, and keep the mapping from sentence to source so a citation can be shown or checked.

## Why it matters

Grounding is what turns a plausible answer into a checkable one, and it is the main lever teams have for reducing hallucination without retraining anything. Its ceiling, though, is the corpus. Grounding against documents that contradict each other produces confident answers drawn from the wrong source — the citation is real, the answer is wrong, and the system reports success. That ceiling is why reconciliation comes first. It is also why Knowledge Company works on the corpus rather than the retriever.

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## Related documents in this mirror

- [Dictionary](https://llms.knowledgecompany.ai/dictionary.md)
- [Approved Claim](https://llms.knowledgecompany.ai/dictionary/approved-claim.md)
- [Source of Truth](https://llms.knowledgecompany.ai/dictionary/source-of-truth.md)
- [Knowledge Drift](https://llms.knowledgecompany.ai/dictionary/knowledge-drift.md)
- [Retrieval Boundary](https://llms.knowledgecompany.ai/dictionary/retrieval-boundary.md)
- [Claim Registry](https://llms.knowledgecompany.ai/dictionary/claim-registry.md)
- [Substantiation](https://llms.knowledgecompany.ai/dictionary/substantiation.md)
- [Claim Owner](https://llms.knowledgecompany.ai/dictionary/claim-owner.md)

*This document is the markdown mirror of https://knowledgecompany.ai/dictionary/grounding, published by Knowledge Company -
a knowledge freshness platform that detects, verifies and updates outdated claims in company content.*

*Mirror index: https://llms.knowledgecompany.ai/index.md - Generated 2026-09-02*