Think twice before trusting artificial intelligence to get the latest news.
Internet browsing service DuckDuckGo’s AI uncovered an interesting detail about President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance: They’ve apparently both died of rabies.
Obviously, they haven’t, but the AI tool seems to have gathered the appropriate sources to reach that strange conclusion.
A user on social media platform X posted a screen shot of the browser being asked, “When did Trump die of rabies?” To which DuckDuckGo replied that the president passed away on June 7.
AI in the search engines DuckDuckGo and Brave started displaying a message that Trump and Vance died from rabies after the vice president bit the president on the advice of Health Minister Kennedy Jr. It all started with mass posts on Reddit, where users mourned Trump and spread…pic.twitter.com/tddi4Dxf6t
— Beefeater (@Beefeater_Fella)June 27, 2026
Futurismadded some context, explaining that a page on the discussion forum Reddit called “r/poisonai” exists for the purpose of mass-posting false information in hopes of tricking AI into believing nonsense.
The tech outlet explained that “what really appears to be happening is yet another cautionary tale about AI digesting incorrect information and parroting it back to users uncritically. Specifically, DuckDuckGo’s AI feature seems to have gotten fooled by a game of telephone kicked off by internet pranksters and laundered into blatant misinformation on a leading search engine.”
In other words, Reddit users gamed this system by generating a high volume of posts with the fake news, to the point where the algorithm detected it and passed along the lie as truth.
In the case of Trump and Vance having rabies, some posts mourned Vance’s passing. One user shared a fake post by Trump on his Truth Social platform, eulogizing the vice president.
Source: VidNews » Feed
