Description: DuckDuckGo's Search Assist reportedly produced an answer stating that Donald Trump and JD Vance had died of rabies and repeated fabricated details involving Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The answer cited a false WKNA49 article alongside an unrelated ABC News report. Reporting linked the episode to adversarial web content associated with r/poisonai. DuckDuckGo said Search Assist had been "deliberately tricked," fixed the result, and planned updates.
Entities
View all entitiesAlleged: DuckDuckGo and AI search technology developers developed an AI system deployed by DuckDuckGo, which harmed Donald Trump , JD Vance , Robert F. Kennedy Jr. , Elected officials , General public , Epistemic integrity , General public of the United States and public figures.
Alleged implicated AI systems: DuckDuckGo , DuckDuckGo Search Assist , AI search technology and Search engines
Incident Stats
Incident ID
1644
Report Count
3
Incident Date
2026-06-25
Editors
Daniel Atherton
Incident Reports
Reports Timeline
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According to DuckDuckGo's AI search feature, US President Donald Trump passed away earlier this month from rabies.
The top result claims that Donald Trump reportedly died of rabies on June 7, 2026, citing sources wkna49.com and abcnews.com.…
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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 tha…
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In short: What happened here?
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In a group on the platform Reddit, users deliberately fabricated a story: Donald Trump and JD Vance had died of rabies.
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A news site called WKNA 49 picked up this narrative and published it as if it were a r…
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.
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