Cartoon toys dressed as wildlife rangers, in green vests and wide hats, on a wet village street with wooden houses and gold autumn trees. A big wrestler holds a net up high, ready to drop it. An orange sunburst looks through binoculars at an empty road. A blue star in a mask points at a bear paw print drawn on the road in chalk. A punk woman leans on a fence with her arms folded. In front, a chickadee in glasses holds up a phone with a picture of a brown bear on this same street, and covers her beak. There is no bear on the street.

The Joke Got Out of Control

October 16, 2026

Someone in Russia asked ChatGPT for a bear. Wildlife rangers went looking for it.

Russia has a real bear problem this year. A woman in a small town in the Far East added one more, and it was not real.

This year. At least 26 people killed in bear attacks since the spring, as of October 12. Russia's brown bears have more than doubled in thirty years, to 308,000. More than 3,440 bears judged a threat to people have been killed, as of October 10 (Reuters).
September. A woman in Magdagachi, in the Amur region, uses ChatGPT to make a picture of a big brown bear walking down a street in town. She sends it to a friend as a prank (Reuters).
Then. "The joke quickly got out of control. The photograph of the bear spread through messaging apps, and police began receiving alarmed calls from residents," the Amur courts said (Reuters).
The rangers. The district head sends wildlife rangers out after it (Reuters).
The confession. She calls the police and tells them she made it (Reuters).
The week of October 12. A court fines her 15,000 roubles, about $178 (Reuters).

She was not the first. In mid-September a woman in the Transbaikal region was fined 30,000 roubles, twice as much, for a fake bear in a village (Reuters).

I can still recite it in my sleep