Why Does Perplexity Sometimes Cite Sources That Don’t Support Its Answer?

I’ve been using Perplexity to look up current topics, and occasionally a cited page seems relevant to the subject but doesn’t actually support the specific claim in the answer. In a few cases, the page appears to discuss a related point rather than the one Perplexity attributes to it.

Is this usually a problem with how the source is interpreted, or can the answer combine details from several pages while attaching only one citation? I’m also curious whether there’s a reliable way to check citations efficiently when researching a claim that may have changed recently.

I don’t expect every AI answer to be perfect, but I’d like to understand what those citations do—and don’t—tell me about the answer’s accuracy.