Coffee or Consult? Google AI Glitch Sends Hospital Callers to Timaru Cafe

A Timaru cafe was inundated with calls for doctors and radiology after Google’s Gemini AI tool incorrectly listed its phone number for Timaru Hospital.

By: AXL Media

Published: Apr 15, 2026, 6:15 AM EDT

Source: RNZ Pacific

A Case of AI Hallucination

The issue, which began in early March 2026, surfaced specifically when users searched for the phrase "Timaru Hospital phone number." While a standard search for the hospital name often yielded correct results, the AI-generated summary at the top of the search page provided the cafe’s contact details.

Andrew Lensen, a senior lecturer in AI at Victoria University, noted that such errors—often called "hallucinations"—occur when AI models mismatch information found during web scraping.

Data Confusion: Information from a community page or directory listing both the cafe and hospital may have been incorrectly associated by the algorithm.

Verification Gap: Despite links to official Ministry of Health pages being present in the summary, the AI failed to extract the correct primary number from those sources.

Impact on the Community