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NOPE
Low reported severity

Brazil: rural worker's retirement claim rejected through the Meu INSS app after the system reportedly recorded a wrong sex

In February (2025, inferred from the article date) a retirement claim filed through Brazil's Meu INSS social security app for a former sugarcane worker in northeast Brazil was rejected. Rest of World reported that the request was turned down because the system identified the claimant as a man. The claimant, who has chronic illnesses, is quoted saying the benefit is still denied despite complete documents, and Rest of World reports that minor errors in earlier claims through the app had led to numerous rejections. The retirement claim was approved in March after INSS directors corrected the mistake, which the claimant attributed to a contact at an agricultural workers' confederation. The INSS states that automated decisions follow specified legal criteria.

AI system
Meu INSS app
Dataprev (developer of the app, per Rest of World); INSS deploys it
Occurred
Feb 2025
Reported
24 April 2025
Event location
Unknown
What the AI did
Made a decision about the person
Reported harm
Other Material Harm
Whose AI use
An institution’s AI use
Setting
Public services
Evidence
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account
4 claims: 4 reported. 5 open questions
People reported harmed
At least 1 person

AI system as recorded: Meu INSS app (AI-assisted automated analysis of benefit claims)

Reported harm

According to Rest of World, a retirement claim was rejected through the app, reportedly because the system recorded the wrong sex, and was approved in March after INSS directors corrected the error.

What remains unknown

  • Whether the wrong-sex rejection came from an AI model, a rule engine or a data-matching step is not established.
  • The article gives the filing month as February without a year. The year 2025 is read from the article date (24 April 2025) and its present-tense context.
  • Dates and causes of the claimant's earlier sick-pay rejections are not stated, so this record covers only the February 2025 retirement claim.
  • No INSS decision record or independent confirmation of the claimant's account was inspected. The Portuguese rewrite adds no independent reporting.
  • Rest of World's statement that the app rejected requests from hundreds of people is an unsourced aggregate and is not counted.

What the evidence supports

AI involvement: reported. Rest of World describes Meu INSS as an AI-powered app (computer vision and natural language processing over uploaded documents) and reports that the claim was rejected because the system identified the claimant as a man. The article does not say whether a model or a fixed rule produced this rejection, and the INSS describes the decisions as automated.

4 claims: 4 reported. What the statuses mean

Reported In a retirement claim filed through the Meu INSS app, the request was rejected because the system identified the claimant as a man.

Causal attribution. Rest of World reports the rejection as caused by the system's identification of the claimant as a man. The source is the claimant's account as reported by the journalist. The Portuguese rewrite depends on the same article. No decision record was seen.

Reported The rejected retirement claim was filed in February and approved in March after INSS directors corrected the mistake in the app.

Causal attribution. The article ties the approval to the claimant's contact at an agricultural workers' confederation, and states that the case went straight to INSS directors. It does not say the contact routed it.

Reported Rest of World reports that minor errors in the claimant's claims filed through the app led to numerous rejections, and quotes the claimant saying that despite having all the documents proving a health condition the benefit is still denied.

Causal attribution. The article attributes the earlier rejections to minor errors in claims filed through the app. Dates of these rejections and whether an AI component made them are not stated.

Reported An INSS spokesperson told Rest of World that each automated decision follows specified legal criteria, and that some policyholders file multiple requests hoping for different results.

Causal attribution. This is the institution's stated position and does not address the claimant's specific rejection.

  • restofworld.org(opens in new tab) supports · English
    Each automated decision is based on specified legal criteria, ensuring that the standards set by the social security legislation are respected,
  • restofworld.org(opens in new tab) supports · English
    Some policyholders have been misusing the program, filing multiple requests in the hopes of obtaining different results, the spokesperson said.

Sources

2 sources inspected, from 1 underlying account. Sources that repeat one account do not corroborate each other.

How the sources were read, and where the events happened

Full body read from a Wayback capture (20260128230439id_) after the live URL returned HTTP 429. Original English. Applies to s1.

Portuguese rewrite of the Rest of World article (it credits Rest of World). Read in the original Portuguese by the reviewing agent without a human translator. Adds no independent reporting. Applies to s2.

Event countries: Unknown. Affected-person countries: Brazil. Court countries: Unknown.

The claimant is described as living in a remote town in northeast Brazil. Where the claim was filed from is not stated, so no event country is recorded. No court is involved.

Reviewed for publication 2026-09-29: A named-outlet journalist interviewed the claimant and the INSS, and the article reports a concrete rejected claim, its reported cause and its correction. The article gives the filing and approval months (February, March) without a year, so 2025 is inferred from its 24 April 2025 date. The AI role is reported and unverified, so claims are attributed and the record is marked alleged.

People reported harmed in this case

At least 1 person

1 AI participant · 0 other people harmed

One claimant with a rejected and later corrected retirement claim. Rest of World says the app has rejected requests from hundreds of people for minor errors, which is an unsourced aggregate and is not counted.

Counted once within this case. The same person may appear in other cases. This count does not establish AI causation.

Cite this case

Compiled per our published methodology: verification statuses, sourcing standards, and corrections process.

APA

NOPE. (2026). Brazil: rural worker's retirement claim rejected through the Meu INSS app after the system reportedly recorded a wrong sex. AI incidents. https://nope.net/incidents/2025-br-meu-inss-rural-worker-retirement-claim-rejected

BibTeX

@misc{2025_br_meu_inss_rural_worker_retirement_claim_rejected,
  title = {Brazil: rural worker's retirement claim rejected through the Meu INSS app after the system reportedly recorded a wrong sex},
  author = {NOPE},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {AI incidents},
  url = {https://nope.net/incidents/2025-br-meu-inss-rural-worker-retirement-claim-rejected}
}

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