Sep 29, 2025Confirmed
AI-generated travel info reportedly sent tourists in Peru looking for a nonexistent 'Sacred Canyon of Humantay'
AI loose in the worldMisinformationDERIVED
Approved by person, Oct 11, 2026. How entries are approved
Two tourists in Peru reportedly relied on AI-generated travel information describing a canyon that does not exist. One paid nearly $160 to reach a rural road near Mollepata with no guide or destination. A trek operator, Miguel Ángel Góngora Meza, warned of risks in high-altitude terrain. Reported around late September 2025.
What this means for youAI chatbots can describe places, tours or facts that do not exist, and sound confident doing so. Before paying for travel, check any AI-suggested destination against official tourism sources or a licensed local operator.
Sources
- AI Incident Databasehttps://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/1636
Data from the AI Incident Database (incidentdatabase.ai), licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. IAAI-21.
Source data license: CC BY-SA 4.0 (database). Report contents keep their own rights; reports.text, submissions, images and videos are excluded from the data license.
Covered by snapshot 45
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This entry is record number 2352. It has not been edited since it was approved; the hash above would not match if it had. How to verify