Skip to main content
NOPE
High reported severity Involving minors Media Coverage

Wuhan, China: reports say a family ate wild mushrooms an AI identification tool called non-poisonous; a 9-year-old was critically ill with amatoxin poisoning

A family from Wuhan, Hubei province, gathered wild mushrooms resembling the edible termite mushroom (jizong) during a mountain outing in June 2026 and, according to a Guangming Online post carried by The Paper on 5 July 2026 and an Asahi Shimbun report of 6 July citing the Changjiang Daily, ran an AI identification tool on them. The tool returned a "non-poisonous" result and the family cooked and ate the mushrooms. All three family members vomited soon after the meal and again before dawn the next day; they were admitted to Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, where the 9-year-old child was moved to the paediatric intensive care unit the same afternoon. The reports say the child had amatoxin poisoning that progressed to the most severe grade, with acute liver failure, hepatic encephalopathy and fluid in the chest and abdomen, and went home after eight days in hospital. The AI tool is not named, its output is not reproduced, and the account comes from one reporting chain.

AI system
Unidentified mushroom-identification tool
Occurred
Jun 2026
Reported
5 July 2026
Event location
China
What the AI did
Communicated with the person
Reported harm
HospitalizationMedical Deterioration
Whose AI use
Their own AI use
Setting
Health · Everyday life
Evidence
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account
4 claims: 4 reported. 4 open questions
People reported harmed
3 people

AI system as recorded: AI image-identification tool ("AI识别工具", "AIアプリ" in the reports), not identified by name, which the family in Wuhan used to check gathered wild mushrooms and which returned a "non-poisonous" result

What Happened

The identification. According to the Guangming Online post carried by The Paper (5 July 2026), the family from Wuhan picked a batch of wild mushrooms that closely resembled the edible jizong (termite) mushroom while on a mountain outing, and specifically used an AI identification tool to tell the species apart in order to avoid risk. After the tool returned a "non-poisonous" ("无毒") result, they cooked and ate the mushrooms. The Asahi Shimbun (6 July 2026), citing the Changjiang Daily, places the outing in Wuhan around late June 2026 and says an AI app judged the mushrooms to have no poison.

The poisoning. The same post says all three family members developed vomiting and gastrointestinal symptoms soon after eating; the mother induced vomiting with salt water and the child went to bed after the symptoms eased. Before dawn the next day all three vomited again and went to the emergency centre of Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, where they were admitted. The child's condition kept worsening and the child was transferred to the paediatric intensive care unit that afternoon. Tests attributed the illness to amatoxin-containing mushrooms; the post says the child's condition progressed to the most dangerous grade (type IV, extremely critical) with acute liver failure, hepatic encephalopathy and pleural and abdominal effusions, and that the child's life was at one point in danger. After eight days of in-patient treatment the child recovered and went home. The Asahi report says the boy was 9 and at one point hovered between life and death.

What the reports do not establish. The AI tool is not named in either report, the photograph and the tool's output are not reproduced, and no source says whether the tool was a general chatbot, a plant-identification app or a search feature. The post is a relay of the hospital's and the local press account; no family member is quoted directly and the child is referred to by a pseudonym. The expert reminder in the post states that appearance, folk methods, simple tools and AI identification cannot accurately determine mushroom toxicity and that amatoxins are not destroyed by cooking, frying, drying or garlic.

Reported harm

According to the reports, all three family members were poisoned and admitted to hospital after eating wild mushrooms that an AI identification tool had called non-poisonous; the 9-year-old child developed amatoxin poisoning with acute liver failure and hepatic encephalopathy, was treated in a paediatric intensive care unit, and recovered after eight days in hospital.

Outcome

Resolved

The child recovered and was discharged after eight days in hospital, according to the Guangming Online post carried by The Paper. The post and the Asahi report carry public warnings not to pick or eat wild mushrooms and not to rely on AI identification; no complaint, regulatory action or statement by an app provider is reported.

What remains unknown

  • Which AI tool or app the family used, what it was shown and what exactly it answered; neither report names the tool or reproduces the output.
  • The exact date of the outing and of admission; the Asahi Shimbun gives late June 2026 citing the Changjiang Daily, and the Guangming post says only recently.
  • Which family member operated the tool and whether the adults needed intensive care; the post says all three were admitted but details only the child's course.
  • The Changjiang Daily's original report, which was not located; the account rests on a relay and on the Asahi Shimbun's partial, paywalled summary of it.

What the evidence supports

AI involvement: reported. The Guangming Online post carried by The Paper says the family used an AI identification tool to tell the gathered mushrooms apart and, after it returned a "non-poisonous" ("无毒") result, cooked and ate them; the Asahi Shimbun, citing the Changjiang Daily, says an AI app judged the mushrooms to have no poison. The tool's answer to the family is the described contribution (communicated_with), and both reports connect that answer to the family eating the mushrooms and to the amatoxin poisoning that followed. The tool is not identified, the photograph and output are not reproduced, and the account rests on one reporting chain from Wuhan; whether the mushrooms would have been eaten without the result is not established.

4 claims: 4 reported. What the statuses mean

Reported A family from Wuhan gathered wild mushrooms resembling the edible jizong mushroom on a mountain outing, used an AI identification tool to check them, received a "non-poisonous" result, and cooked and ate them.

Causal attribution. Reported by the Guangming Online post and, citing the Changjiang Daily, by the Asahi Shimbun; one reporting chain, no family member quoted directly, tool not named.

  • m.thepaper.cn(opens in new tab) supports · Chinese
    '采摘了一批外形酷似鸡枞菌的野生蘑菇。为规避风险，家人特意借助AI识别工具辨别菌类，在得到“无毒”的识别结果后，放心将蘑菇烹饪食用'
  • asahi.com(opens in new tab) supports · Japanese
    'AIアプリが「毒はない」と判定したことから調理して食べた'
Reported All three family members developed vomiting and were admitted to Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University; the child was moved to the paediatric intensive care unit, had amatoxin poisoning with acute liver failure, hepatic encephalopathy and pleural and abdominal effusions, and recovered after eight days in hospital.

Causal attribution. Clinical course as described in the Guangming Online post, which attributes it to the hospital findings ("经检查"); the Asahi report confirms only that the boy was at one point critical. No hospital record was inspected.

  • m.thepaper.cn(opens in new tab) supports · Chinese
    '一家三口相继出现呕吐、肠胃不适等症状'; '紧急前往武汉大学中南医院急救中心就诊并住院治疗。入院后，小奥的病情持续加重，当天下午便被转入儿科重症监护室接受救治'; '相继引发急性肝衰竭、肝性脑病、胸腹水等多重并发症，生命一度陷入垂危。在住院治疗8天后，小奥顺利康复回家'
  • asahi.com(opens in new tab) supports · Japanese
    '一時は生死の境をさまよう出来事があった'
Reported The child was 9 years old and the outing took place in Wuhan around late June 2026.

Causal attribution. Age from both reports; the late-June timing is the Asahi Shimbun's account of the Changjiang Daily report, and the Guangming post dates the event only as recent ("日前").

Reported The post's expert reminder states that appearance, folk remedies, simple tools and AI identification cannot accurately determine mushroom toxicity, and that amatoxins are not destroyed by cooking, frying, drying or garlic.

Causal attribution. An unnamed expert reminder in the post; context for the AI tool's limits, not evidence about this family's tool.

Sources

2 sources inspected, from 1 underlying account. Sources that repeat one account do not corroborate each other.

How the sources were read, and where the events happened

Read in Chinese and translated by the research agent (an AI) on 2026-10-09; no human reviewer inspected the text. The page is a Guangming Online media post hosted on The Paper (澎湃号·媒体), published 5 July 2026, HTTP 200. Its retained text does not name its original source; it carries the same account that the Asahi Shimbun attributes to the Changjiang Daily, so it is grouped with that chain. Applies to s1.

Read in Japanese and translated by the research agent (an AI) on 2026-10-08 and re-read from the saved body on 2026-10-09; no human reviewer inspected the text. Asahi Shimbun, 6 July 2026, HTTP 200; the article is paywalled after its opening paragraphs, so only the lead and the first four paragraphs were inspected. It attributes its account to the Changjiang Daily (長江日報), a Wuhan newspaper, and is therefore the same reporting chain as s1. Applies to s2.

Event countries: China. Affected-person countries: China. Court countries: Unknown.

The post says the family is from Wuhan, Hubei province, and that the three were treated at Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University; the Asahi report places the event in Wuhan, Hubei province, in June. The affected family lives in Wuhan. No court proceeding is reported.

Reviewed for publication 2026-10-09: Published as a core case on one attributed chain: a Guangming Online post carried by The Paper and an Asahi Shimbun report citing the Changjiang Daily both say the family ran an AI identification tool that called the gathered mushrooms non-poisonous, ate them, and that the 9-year-old child developed life-threatening amatoxin poisoning treated in intensive care. Every claim is attributed to those reports. The child and the parents are not named (the post uses a pseudonym), and the hospital is a public institution named in both reports.

People described

A 9-year-old child and two adult family members from Wuhan, Hubei province, who ate wild mushrooms after an AI identification tool called them non-poisonous; all three were admitted to hospital and the child was treated in intensive care. None is named; the post uses a pseudonym for the child.

People reported harmed in this case

3 people

1 AI participant · 2 other people harmed

Three people: the post says all three family members ("一家三口") fell ill and that the whole family was admitted to hospital ("一家人尽数入院治疗"). The family ran the AI tool ("家人特意借助AI识别工具"), so at least one of the poisoned adults was a direct user (participant_users_affected_min 1); the child, aged 9, and the other adult are counted as other people harmed because the reports do not say who operated the tool.

Counted once within this case. The same person may appear in other cases. This count does not establish AI causation.

Tags

#mushroom-identification#image-recognition#poisoning#hospitalisation#foraging#china#wuhan

Cite this case

Compiled per our published methodology: verification statuses, sourcing standards, and corrections process.

APA

NOPE. (2026). Wuhan, China: reports say a family ate wild mushrooms an AI identification tool called non-poisonous; a 9-year-old was critically ill with amatoxin poisoning. AI incidents. https://nope.net/incidents/2026-wuhan-family-ai-mushroom-identification-non-poisonous-child-critical-amatoxin-poisoning

BibTeX

@misc{2026_wuhan_family_ai_mushroom_identification_non_poisonous_child_critical_amatoxin_poisoning,
  title = {Wuhan, China: reports say a family ate wild mushrooms an AI identification tool called non-poisonous; a 9-year-old was critically ill with amatoxin poisoning},
  author = {NOPE},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {AI incidents},
  url = {https://nope.net/incidents/2026-wuhan-family-ai-mushroom-identification-non-poisonous-child-critical-amatoxin-poisoning}
}

Related cases

High Unidentified mushroom-identification tool

Wuhan, China: Hubei TV reports a 4-year-old spent three days in intensive care after a family ate wild mushrooms an AI photo check had not flagged as poisonous

A family of three from Wuhan, Hubei province, picked wild mushrooms on a mountain outside the city on a weekend shortly before 25 July 2026, according to a Hubei TV (经视直播) report published on QQ News on 25 July 2026 and relayed by The Paper on 27 July. The report says a parent who claimed years of mushroom-picking experience photographed the mushrooms with a phone so that AI could identify whether they were poisonous; the software gave no toxicity warning, and the family cooked and ate them, letting the daughter eat more. Five to six hours later all three had vomiting and diarrhoea. The report says the family at first declined admission and the child was treated as an outpatient; by the next morning the child's transaminase level had risen from 1.5 times to 10 times normal and she was admitted, then moved to the intensive care unit of Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, where, the report says, her liver indices reached 100 times normal and she was treated with blood perfusion and plasma exchange before being out of danger on the third day. The AI software is not named, its output is not reproduced, and the account comes from one broadcaster's report. This is a different family from the June 2026 Wuhan case involving a 9-year-old.

Medium Unidentified mushroom-identification tool

Wakayama, Japan: city health officials say a man in his 70s was hospitalised after an AI photo check told him a poisonous wild mushroom was edible (MBS report)

According to Wakayama city’s public-health division, as reported by MBS (Mainichi Broadcasting) on 21 November 2025 and relayed by HuffPost Japan on 9 September 2026, a man in his 70s living in Wakayama city gathered wild mushrooms resembling hiratake (oyster mushroom) and shiitake in the mountains of Shimokitayama village, Nara prefecture, on 3 November 2025. The next day he photographed a mushroom with an electronic device and ran an AI identification, which answered to the effect that it was shiitake or hiratake and edible. The mushroom was in fact the poisonous tsukiyotake (moonlight mushroom); about 30 minutes after eating it he began vomiting and was briefly hospitalised. The city warned that judging wild mushrooms by AI or by picture books alone is dangerous. HuffPost Japan reports that Japan’s agriculture ministry issued a warning on 4 September 2026 against deciding edibility from search results or AI answers. The AI tool is not identified in the reports and the man’s exact exchange with it is not reproduced.

Medium Unidentified symptom-analysis tool

Zhejiang toddler hospitalised with pneumonia after his mother relied on an AI app's asthma diagnosis and declined a chest X-ray (hospital account)

A Guangming Daily feature on AI symptom-checking, republished by Bingtuan Daily on Sina Finance on 8 October 2026, recounts a case from August 2026 in Zhejiang and closes it with a quotation from the head of paediatrics at a provincial hospital, who says the family did not heed her advice. A three-year-old boy with a history of asthma was brought in; his mother had entered keywords such as allergy, asthma, cough and night-time wheezing into an AI application, which quickly returned a diagnosis of an acute bronchial asthma attack. On that basis, the account says, she declined the chest X-ray the doctor recommended and insisted on taking home only nebuliser medication. Two days later the child's condition worsened with rapid breathing; on an overnight return to the hospital, examination found extensive inflammatory lesions in both lungs, and he was diagnosed with human metapneumovirus pneumonia with a superimposed bacterial infection and admitted as an emergency. The paediatrics head is quoted saying the illness would not have become so severe had the family listened earlier. The AI application is not named, and the account comes from the hospital side as relayed by the newspaper; no statement from the family is reported.

High ChatGPT

Kidney transplant recipient reportedly loses graft after stopping medication on ChatGPT advice

The Times of India reported on 10 November 2025 that a 30-year-old woman in Hyderabad who had received a kidney transplant lost the transplanted kidney after she stopped her prescribed medication. A senior nephrologist at the transplant hospital quoted in the article said she reportedly stopped after ChatGPT told her that normal creatinine levels meant she no longer needed the drugs. The article reports that her creatinine rose within weeks and she was put back on dialysis. The chat was not shown.

If you or someone you know is struggling, free and confidential support is available. Find a helpline near you at Signpost.

Back to all incidents