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

The identification. According to the Hubei TV (经视直播) report carried on QQ News (25 July 2026), a family of three went mushroom picking on a mountain on the outskirts of Wuhan one weekend. The parent said they had years of experience picking mushrooms and additionally photographed the mushrooms with a phone, hoping AI would identify whether they were poisonous. The software gave no toxicity warning, so the family cooked and ate the mushrooms; the parents let the daughter eat more. Five to six hours later all three began vomiting and had diarrhoea.

The illness. The report says that when the child first reached hospital her mental state was fair and her liver function only mildly abnormal, and that the family, hoping for the best, declined admission and accepted outpatient injections. The paediatrics director of Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University is quoted explaining that mushroom poisoning has a false-recovery period in which symptoms ease while the toxin attacks the liver. After one night the child's transaminase level had risen from 1.5 times to 10 times normal and her condition deteriorated; the hospital reserved a bed and, after repeated persuasion, the family agreed to admission. By then the child was dehydrated and motionless. She was moved to the intensive care unit, her liver indices peaked at 100 times normal, and the team carried out blood perfusion and plasma exchange overnight; on the third day the transaminase level stabilised and began to fall and the child was out of danger.

The hospital's comment on AI. The paediatrics director is quoted saying AI is still developing, does not yet have the recognition capability to distinguish mushrooms, and that the angle and lighting of a photograph affect AI identification; the report's closing advice is not to pick, buy or eat wild mushrooms and that AI identification is unreliable.

What the report does not establish. The AI software is not named, the photograph and output are not reproduced, no family member is quoted directly, and no second newsroom independently reported the event; The Paper's 27 July video item credits Hubei TV as its material source. The exact date of the outing is not stated.

According to the Hubei TV report, all three family members were poisoned after eating wild mushrooms that an AI photo check had not flagged as poisonous; the 4-year-old developed severe liver injury, was treated in intensive care with blood perfusion and plasma exchange, and was out of danger on the third day.

The child was out of danger on the third day of intensive care, according to the Hubei TV report; the report carries the hospital's public warning not to rely on AI identification of wild mushrooms. No complaint, regulatory action or statement by a software provider is reported.