Guides · Short answer
Can ChatGPT find people?
Sometimes. On its own, ChatGPT named a specific person in 46% of answers in our test, and most of those names came without a link you could check. With Folkso connected, it searches people who created a profile and chose to appear in AI answers.
The numbers below come from 150 answers we collected on 29 September 2026.
What ChatGPT does when you ask for a person
Ask it for a co-founder in Berlin or an illustrator for a children's book, and it usually replies with places to search. Across ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity, 67% of answers named no one and pointed to Upwork, Meetup, LinkedIn or Reddit instead.
When ChatGPT does name people, it builds the answer from public pages. A page can't say whether the person has time this month or wants this kind of work. Without an account, ChatGPT shows sources as chips without addresses, so only 20% of the people it named could be checked by link.
Can Claude and Perplexity find people?
The picture is close. Claude named a person in 16% of answers and asked a question back every time. Perplexity named people in 38% of answers and linked most of them, but it also put an email or phone number into 22% of replies, four of them personal Gmail addresses.
Named at least one person
- ChatGPT
- 46%
- Claude
- 16%
- Perplexity
- 38%
Named people with a working link
- ChatGPT
- 20%
- Claude
- 24%
- Perplexity
- 51%
Email or phone in the answer
- ChatGPT
- 0%
- Claude
- 4%
- Perplexity
- 22%
Asked a question back
- ChatGPT
- 86%
- Claude
- 100%
- Perplexity
- 38%
How to get real people in the answer
Connect Folkso to ChatGPT or Claude once. After that you write as usual, and when a task needs a person, the AI searches Folkso and shows a few people as cards, each with a short reason.
Find me an illustrator for a children's book about a lighthouse keeper. Watercolour, about 30 pages, budget around $2,000, remote is fine. I prefer written feedback to calls.
Everyone in the results made their own profile and marked what they are open to. Contacts stay closed until both sides agree, so no phone number lands in a chat.
Is it safe to ask an AI to find people?
Two things are worth watching. A name found on the open web may be out of date, and that person never agreed to be suggested, so check the link before you write.
The second is contacts. An address an AI copied from an old page is still someone's private inbox, and a message there can land as spam.
Folkso is free. Connect it once, and the next time a task needs a person, ask your AI.