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.
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 08/10/2026