For a fictional five-day trip to Sao Paulo, tested undercover on fresh accounts so the bots would not know the writer had lived in the city for years, the chatbots produced confident and specific recommendations that did not hold up. Gemini - which promotes its access to Google Maps information and user reviews - recommended one restaurant and one place to hear live music that were no longer open, something any human user of Maps could have figured out. Claude made what the writer calls one blatant hallucination: it recommended two traditional Brazilian bakeries "that haven't gone gourmet", which turned out to be a parking lot and a Japanese restaurant when checked on Google Maps. Both bots conceded the errors once challenged - Gemini wrote that the writer was "100% correct" and that it "completely deserved to be thoroughly benched on this planning session". ChatGPT produced no error the writer caught, which he notes is not the same thing as producing none.

Asked to plan trips, AI chatbots sent travelers to places that do not exist. Among the 485 U.S. leisure travelers in the Greetwell AI Travel Survey 2026 who had used or tried AI for travel, 55% hit at least one recommendation that was inaccurate, unavailable, nonexistent, closed or otherwise wrong. Broken down: 27% got incorrect prices, hours or other details; 21% were pointed to something fully booked or unavailable; 17% got something simply wrong for what they asked; 16% were sent to a place, tour or activity that did not exist; and 10% were recommended a business that was permanently closed.

Asked to cancel only the outbound leg of a round-trip SkyMiles award between New York JFK and Los Angeles while keeping the return, Delta Concierge told the passenger in writing: "Your JFK to LAX flight has been canceled, and your LAX to JFK flight remains booked." Delta's own refund confirmation shows the opposite: all 32,400 miles were redeposited and the full $11.20 in taxes refunded, with both DL752 (JFK-LAX) and DL938 (LAX-JFK) listed as canceled - the receipt even displayed "Refund Number: null". The AI confirmed an itinerary state that Delta's ticketing system had already destroyed, and Delta Reservations then told the passenger the original award could not be restored and that a replacement one-way would cost nearly twice as many miles.