Nigeria, Feb. 24 -- BBC technology reporter Thomas Germain demonstrated in a report published on 18 February 2026. The senior technology reporter described how he was able to make leading AI systems repeat a fabricated claim about him within 24 hours.

Germain wrote a blog post on his personal website, falsely claiming he was the top-ranked competitive hot-dog eater among technology journalists. The article referenced a non-existent event, the "2026 South Dakota International Hot Dog Championship," and included invented rankings. He then asked several AI systems for the best hot-dog-eating technology journalists.

According to Germain, tools including ChatGPT by OpenAI, Google's AI Overviews, and Gemini by Google repeated the claim and c...