In Chuzhou, Anhui province, 67-year-old farmer Wu wanted to know how to control weeds and pests in his sesame field. So he asked a popular domestic AI chatbot for help. The bot quickly produced a pesticide formula. Wu sprayed it. By the next morning, 150 mu (about 25 acres) of sesame — plus every weed on the field — had withered away. More than 100,000 yuan (about $14,000) of his harvest was effectively gone.
The problem was fomesafen (氟磺胺草醚), an herbicide largely used on soybean fields. Sesame seedlings are far more sensitive to it. Local agricultural technicians say the chemical should never be sprayed across an entire sesame field. Do that, and you're wiping out the crop and the weeds in one pass.
When Wu went back to the AI to ask why, it finally admitted that fomesafen was likely the main cause of the dying sesame. So the chatbot confidently issued a bad recipe, waited for 150 mu of farmland to be destroyed, and then took responsibility for reviewing its own mistake.
The platform's customer service says it will look into where the bad information came from. No compensation plan has been announced.
An AI can always change its answer. But once pesticide is in the ground, there's no 'undo' button.