Google's approach of drafting an answer first, then searching for sources to attribute it — which we argue is more fragile than retrieving first.
Generate-then-ground is the approach of drafting an answer first and then searching for sources to attribute and revise it afterwards. Google's RARR (Retrofit Attribution using Research and Revision) is the classic example: the model drafts, turns its own draft into search queries, then retrieves passages to check facts and bolt on citations.
We think Google got this order wrong. It creates a single point of failure — one malformed auto-generated query cascades into wrong evidence and wrong edits — adds a latency tax of three passes, and often "fixes" facts by deleting them, trimming useful nuance.
The more robust alternative is to ground first and write second, as in retrieval-augmented generation, where evidence sits in context before the model speaks. This weakness also explains why post-hoc citation is a poor basis for fairly attributing and paying creators — the problem our CAPS proposal sets out to fix.
