I interpreted that to mean that they checked the AI answer that google sticks at the top of every search, which is unfortunately best practice if you're not tech-savvy enough to use DDG + a pile of Firefox extensions to help filter out the mass produced slop websites.

What with the absolute hamstringing of search engines, going to the sources of the AI suggested answer is often the only way to get directly relevant information to your question out of google. It's for sure slopper behavior to just accept the answer without checking, but that didn't sound like what happened. Maybe I'm just projecting my own behavior onto them, though.