HISPI Project Cerebellum HISPI PROJECT CEREBELLUM

Alleged Inaccurate Output by Perplexity AI Delays CLL Treatment

January 5, 2026

Joseph Neal Riley is reported to have used Perplexity AI for self-diagnosis of a complex issue related to chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), allegedly resulting in a delay of about a year in an oncologist-recommended Ven-Obi treatment. His son, Benjamin Riley, claims that Perplexity may have misrepresented the medical research it cited, a conclusion he later found supported by the study's authors.

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Alleged deployer
perplexity-ai
Alleged developer
perplexity-ai
Alleged harmed parties
joseph-neal-riley, benjamin-riley, epistemic-integrity, people-seeking-medical-advice

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Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/1426

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide

We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.