RAG: Retrieval-Augmented Generation Failure Modes

Type: KNOWLEDGE

Verification: unverified - Evidence: ungraded

Quality: public

RAG failure modes: (1) Retrieval failure — chunk doesn't contain answer; (2) Context poisoning — injected chunks override correct chunks; (3) Lost in the middle — LLM ignores middle chunks (Liu 2023); (4) Chunking artifacts — answer split across chunks. Security: adversarial documents can trigger indirect prompt injection.

Source: https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.11401