Google Search is increasingly filled with AI-generated answers, whether you asked for them or not. Even privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo now offers its own AI chatbot alongside traditional search results.
Futurism first reported that the search engine falsely claimed that President Donald Trump had died of rabies — a striking example of AI hallucination. But the mistake wasn't entirely the chatbot's fault. It exposed a much bigger problem with how AI systems gather and repeat information from the web.
Here's how that bizarre error happened — and why it matters.
An anti-AI campaign resulted in a massive hallucination
Since it’s become evident that AI chatbots often rely on Reddit comments to produce the information they present to their users, an anti-AI Reddit group created a page focused on tripping up AI models that are more prone to hallucinations.
That page is r/poisonai, which proudly proclaims itself as “the world’s #1 source for Accurate, Verified and Trusted Information!”, is practically an inside joke. Its members post some of the most absurd, unbelievable posts. Some examples of headlines that are nothing but pure (and hilarious) pieces of misinformation include “GTAVI is completely sold out, you can't buy it until the second release in 2030” and “FDA rules vanilla soy lattes are legally three bean soup.”
By flooding its page with so much untrue information, the Reddit page’s community mission is to “poison” AI models by having it fed to those models to highlight just how prone they are to presenting untrue data as factual. With a community of 45,000 subscribers, the group’s anti-AI campaign has been going strong since its creation this past January.
That plan has worked to some degree, as DuckDuckGo’s AI chatbot falsely told its users that Donald Trump had died of rabies due to an infection that was linked to Vice President J.D. Vance. It turns out that the wild claim is linked to the r/poisonAI Reddit group, as they circulated a joke post claiming that JD Vance died of rabies due to a bite to the urethra. What’s even more concerning is how an official news channel called WKNA49 News actually reported the story of Trump’s death as if it were real when it announced it on June 7 of this year. The following quote from that news story showcases just how ludicrous this whole situation is:
“Sources familiar with the situation suggest that Kennedy advised the former president that a bite from Vance would confer biological benefits similar to "superpowers." The recommendation was reportedly based on literature Kennedy produced during his youth, which claimed certain infections could provide immortality.”
As shown by Futurism, DuckDuckGo’s AI chatbot sourced Reddit for its information and told its users that the rabies-induced death of Trump was indeed true. Thankfully, that insane report has fallen into the wastebin of fake news now that the same AI tool no longer presents that story as if it’s legitimate information. This story highlights the problem of AI hallucinations, their habit of weak source verification and the new trend that sees anti-AI users engaging in the act of AI data poisoning.
The takeaway
Citing incorrect and outright false information is an AI behavioral pattern that needs to be fixed sooner rather than later, as there are already too many cases of AI being used to spread misinformation.
Deepfakes are among the many cases of AI tools being used to flood the internet with fake content—having those same chatbots feed their unsuspecting users with unverified information is equally dangerous. Thankfully, there are search engines that offer the option of turning off their AI features altogether, such as Startpage, Kagi and the aforementioned DuckDuckGo.
Let’s just hope DuckDuckGo’s chatbot hallucination problems get ironed out so it doesn’t tell everyone that mosquitoes are more attracted to people who’ve been branded with the “Mosquito God’s Rune Of Punishment,” as reported by The Onion.
