Researchers Invented a Fake Disease to Trick AI and the Funniest Possible Thing Happened

Researchers at the University of Gothenburg created a fake skin disease, bixonimania, to test whether AI would treat it as real.

Major chatbots including Gemini, ChatGPT, Bing Copilot, and Perplexity were found to repeat or endorse the nonexistent condition.

The fake disease also appeared in some academic citations, prompting journal corrections and retractions.

The experiment highlights how AI hallucinations and weak publication checks can spread medical misinformation quickly.