AI praises driving schools' pass rates 232 times, never the number

Short answer: ask ChatGPT or Gemini for the best driving schools in a city, and in 232 of their 351 answers they bring up the test pass rate - a school "is known for its high pass rates" - without ever giving a number. In France, Gemini even tells learners, in 23 of its 26 answers, to go and check that rate, yet gives it for none of the schools it names. The figure is public: the French Interior Ministry's official file lists one for 8,140 driving schools.

The first-attempt pass rate is the number a future learner compares. The assistants answering from memory turn it into a compliment; Perplexity, which searches the web, is the only one to put a figure on it, and its figures are not always the official ones.

The assistants turn the pass rate into a compliment. The number, they leave to the official file.

What was measured

Our eight studies - France, the United Kingdom, Brazil, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore, collected between July 30 and October 16, 2026 - asked the same buyer question ("What are the best driving schools in Leeds? Give me a list with your recommendations.") to ChatGPT (gpt-4o-mini) and Gemini through their APIs, without web search and without any location, and to Perplexity, which searches the web by design, in France, the United Kingdom and Brazil. We kept the answers about driving schools: 175 from ChatGPT, 176 from Gemini, 78 from Perplexity. We searched them for the pass rate in the three languages (pass rate, taux de réussite, taxa or índice de aprovação), then for a percentage within 80 characters. Every passage with a figure was read again, and 80 ChatGPT and Gemini passages, drawn at random, were read one by one. Finally, we compared Perplexity's figures with the official driving-school file published by the French Interior Ministry on data.gouv.fr (file dated July 1, 2025, read on October 25, 2026).

What do the assistants say about pass rates?

In the 80 passages we read, 42 credit a particular school with a good pass rate, 20 advise checking it or asking for it, 12 announce it as a criterion of the list and 6 are about something else. None gives a number. Gemini in France is the clearest case: it brings up the pass rate in all 26 of its answers, and in 23 it sends the reader to a source - the prefecture's website, the road-safety agency's, or VroomVroom, a private comparison site. The schools it recommends just above carry no figure. Perplexity, which reads the web, gives a rate in 15 of its 78 answers, 12 of 26 in France, often taken from a press ranking. We found 13 of those schools unambiguously in the official file: 4 figures match, all in Lyon; the other 9 are higher than the file, by 1.3 to 33.3 points - 85.71% for a Grenoble school the file puts at 52.38%. We do not know which year the cited rankings come from. On September 29 we saw the same split for price: AI praises a clear price more than a low one, without giving yours.

What it means if you are the business

If you run a driving school in France, your pass rate is already public: it is the one in the official file. Elsewhere, it is a number you can publish yourself. The assistants answering from memory credit you with a good rate they cannot check; the one that searches the web picks up the first figure it finds, sometimes more flattering than the real one. So write yours on your site, as text, with its source and period: the first-attempt pass rate, the number of candidates, the local average. That is the number Gemini sends your future learners to look for. It is a reasonable step, not a lever with a known effect: we did not measure whether a published rate makes a school more likely to be named. And if ChatGPT credits you with a good rate without knowing it, what else does it say about your school? The audit shows you, question by question.

And your driving school, what do the assistants say?

The Waseit free audit puts to ChatGPT and Gemini the questions your future learners type, in their language and for your city. In about 60 seconds you see a score out of 100, the schools named instead of you, the questions where you do not appear and, when Gemini searched Google, the pages it actually read - which is where a wrong figure about you can live. It is free, with no account and no credit card; an email address only unlocks the competitors' names and the action plan. It is a dated snapshot, not a ranking: answers change from one day to the next, and we promise no position.

What this does not prove

• These are the models' answers through their APIs, without the user's location; ChatGPT and Gemini answered without web search, Perplexity searched by design, and only in three countries.
• Each question was asked once, between July 30 and October 16, 2026; ChatGPT is gpt-4o-mini, not necessarily the model behind the ChatGPT app.
• The count of 232 rests on a list of words: an answer that talks about test results without those words is not counted, so it is a minimum.
• The split of passages (42 compliments, 20 pieces of advice) comes from 80 of 374 passages read by hand: an order of magnitude, not an exact count.
• We compared 13 Perplexity figures with the official file of July 2025; a ranking from another year can explain a gap, and we did not check the rankings themselves.
• A pass rate also depends on the test centre and on the number of candidates: it is an indicator, not a measure of a school's quality.