VISUAL HALLUCINATION IN A PAID AI SYSTEM: A Documented Case of Multimodal Confabulation by Gemini AI Plus

This paper documents a case of severe visual hallucination — also termed multimodal confabulation — observed in Gemini AI Plus (paid tier) on 18 April 2026. The subject AI system was presented with a screenshot of a LinkedIn recruitment advertisement from Scoot Airlines, a low-cost carrier based in Singapore, soliciting pilots for its Airbus A320 fleet. Rather than accurately describing the image content, Gemini fabricated an entirely different reality: it identified the image as a Stripe financial dashboard belonging to the user, and proceeded to generate specific, fictitious financial data — including gross sales figures in Indonesian Rupiah (IDR), percentage growth rates, transaction counts, and average…