Description: Two tourists in Peru reportedly relied on AI-generated travel information describing a nonexistent destination called the "Sacred Canyon of Humantay." One tourist had paid nearly $160 to reach a rural road near Mollepata without a guide or actual destination. Trek operator Miguel Ángel Góngora Meza intervened after seeing the purportedly AI-generated itinerary and warned that such misinformation could expose travelers to serious risks in high-altitude Andean terrain.
Editor Notes: The exact incident date is unknown. Reporting suggests the event occurred in late September 2025; 09/29/2025 is used as the earliest documented report-date fallback. The incident ID was created 08/13/2026.
Entities
View all entitiesAlleged: OpenAI , Large language model developers and Chatbot developers developed an AI system deployed by Travelers , Tourists seeking the supposed Sacred Canyon of Humantay , tourists and Chatbot users, which harmed Travelers , tourists , Chatbot users , OpenAI users , Epistemic integrity and Consumers.
Incident Stats
Incident ID
1636
Report Count
2
Incident Date
2025-09-29
Editors
Daniel Atherton
Incident Reports
Reports Timeline
Loading...
An imagined town in Peru, an Eiffel tower in Beijing: travellers are increasingly using tools like ChatGPT for itinerary ideas -- and being sent to destinations that don't exist.
Miguel Angel Gongora Meza, founder and director of Evolution …
Loading...
¿Has utilizado alguna vez ChatGPT para planificar tus vacaciones? Lo más probable es que sí y también es posible que la inteligencia artificial te haya dicho que vayas a un lugar presumiblemente turístico que no lo es... y, puede que ¡ni ex…
Variants
A "variant" is an AI incident similar to a known case—it has the same causes, harms, and AI system. Instead of listing it separately, we group it under the first reported incident. Unlike other incidents, variants do not need to have been reported outside the AIID. Learn more from the research paper.
Seen something similar?
unreviewed
Incident Date:
2025-10-05