Low reported severity

Freelance web designer says a longtime client cancelled a commissioned clinic website by text, saying Claude had built the whole site (first-person)

In a public post to r/antiai created on 7 October 2026, a person who describes years of graphic design and website work for one client writes that the client had asked them to build a separate website for a new clinic and had sent over the material, and that on the day of the post the client texted to say not to bother because Claude had built the entire website, asking the poster to review it instead. The poster says the same client had earlier moved its graphic design to AI-generated material that copied the poster's design direction, leaving them only the website work, and that they feel sick over the cancellation. In a reply the poster says they will take a part-time job as a backup while keeping their remaining clients. The client is not named and did not respond; the account is the poster's alone and uncorroborated.

AI system: Claude (reported)
Occurred: 7 Oct 2026
Reported: 7 October 2026
Event location: Unknown

What the AI did: Relation unknown
Reported harm: Professional HarmPsychological Distress

Whose AI use: An institution’s AI use
Setting: Work

Evidence: AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source; 4 claims: 4 reported. 5 open questions
People reported harmed: 1 person

AI system as recorded: Claude, which the client told the poster had built the entire clinic website (the client's statement as relayed by the poster); earlier AI-generated graphic design material the poster attributes to the client without naming a tool

What Happened

The commission. The poster writes: "I've been working with a client for years now, and they recently asked me to build a separate website for an expansion project" for a new clinic. "Their team sent over all the information for the new clinic website, and I was planning to start building it out once I finished up some other tasks."

The cancellation. "Today, I get a text from the client telling me not to worry about it anymore. Apparently, Claude built the entire website for him, and now he's asking me to review it." The poster says they answered "Oh yeah, okay, cool" and adds: "Meanwhile, I'm sitting here feeling sick to my stomach over this bullshit."

Earlier loss of design work. The poster says that for years they handled the client's graphic design, but the client "eventually started pumping out cringe AI slop that basically copied the original design direction I had established for them. That ended up pushing me out of the graphic design side of things and left me primarily handling their website work." No tool is named for that earlier material.

What follows. Told by a commenter to start looking for a new job, the poster replies that they are "probably going to start working there part-time just to have something as a backup while holding on to the clients I still have." Other commenters describe their own workplaces moving design work to Claude; those are separate accounts and are not evidence about this client.

Reported harm

The poster says a longtime client cancelled a commissioned website job by text after telling them Claude had built the entire site, following an earlier loss of the client's graphic design work to AI-generated material; the poster reports feeling sick over it and plans a part-time job as a backup (first-person account, uncorroborated).

Outcome

Ongoing

At the time of the thread the poster had lost the commissioned website job, said they were considering a part-time job as a backup and were holding on to their remaining clients. No response from the client and no fee, contract or payment detail is reported.

What remains unknown

The client, the clinic and their location.
Whether the website the client says Claude built was completed or used, and whether the poster reviewed it.
The value of the cancelled work and whether any contract or payment covered it.
The tool behind the earlier AI-generated design material; the poster names none.
The poster's local date of the client's text; the post says "Today" and is timestamped 22:12 UTC on 7 October 2026.

What the evidence supports

AI involvement: reported. The poster says the client cancelled a commissioned clinic website by text because, in the client's words as relayed by the poster, Claude had built the entire website, and that the client had earlier replaced the poster's graphic design work with AI-generated material. This is a reported response by a client to its own adoption of AI tools: the harm is the client's decision to drop the commissioned work, no AI output or action toward the poster is described, the website the client says Claude built was not inspected, and no client statement was retrieved. The product name rests on the client's statement relayed by the poster.

4 claims: 4 reported. What the statuses mean

Reported The poster says they have worked for the client for years and were asked to build a separate website for a new clinic, for which the client's team had sent the material.

Causal attribution. Poster's account.

reddit.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
'I've been working with a client for years now, and they recently asked me to build a separate website for an expansion project'; 'Their team sent over all the information for the new clinic website'

Reported The poster says the client texted on the day of the post to cancel the website job, saying Claude had built the entire website, and asked the poster to review it.

Causal attribution. Poster relays the client's text; the client's message itself is not reproduced and no client statement was retrieved.

reddit.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
'Today, I get a text from the client telling me not to worry about it anymore. Apparently, Claude built the entire website for him, and now he's asking me to review it.'

Reported The poster says the client had earlier moved its graphic design to AI-generated material that copied the poster's design direction, leaving the poster only the website work.

Causal attribution. Poster's account; the earlier material is described as AI-generated without a named tool.

reddit.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
'they eventually started pumping out cringe AI slop that basically copied the original design direction I had established for them. That ended up pushing me out of the graphic design side of things'

Reported The poster says they feel sick over the cancellation and, in a reply, that they will take a part-time job as a backup while keeping their remaining clients.

Causal attribution. Poster's account of their own reaction and plans.

reddit.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
'I'm sitting here feeling sick to my stomach over this bullshit'; 'start working there part-time just to have something as a backup while holding on to the clients I still have'

Sources

1 source inspected. Sources that repeat one account do not corroborate each other.

r/antiai, 7 October 2026: "Longtime client is slowly replacing all my work with AI"(opens in new tab)
s1 · reddit.com · Forum post · English · Inspected · 7 October 2026 · Primary

How the sources were read, and where the events happened

Read in English on 2026-10-08: full self-text and the 44 comments retrieved through the arctic_shift archive API by post ID (first request 422, retry 200), one of them a reply by the poster. The poster handle is not recorded. Applies to s1.

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

The post does not say where the poster or the client is. The subreddit and the vocabulary of the post are not evidence of location.

Reviewed for publication 2026-10-08: Published under the public-forum rule as a concrete first-person account of a freelance designer losing a commissioned website job when the client said Claude had built the site, reviewed as a consequential response by a client to its own AI adoption. Described with attribution and without corroboration; the client is not identified and the poster's handle is not recorded.

People described

The poster, a freelance graphic and web designer who says a longtime client cancelled a commissioned website

People reported harmed in this case

1 person

0 AI participants · 1 other person harmed

One person counted: the poster, who lost the commissioned work through the client's decision. The job loss is a consequence of the client's AI use, not of the poster's own use.

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). Freelance web designer says a longtime client cancelled a commissioned clinic website by text, saying Claude had built the whole site (first-person). AI incidents. https://nope.net/incidents/2026-freelance-web-designer-says-longtime-client-cancelled-commissioned-website-after-building-it-with-claude-first-person

BibTeX

@misc{2026_freelance_web_designer_says_longtime_client_cancelled_commissioned_website_after_building_it_with_claude_first_person,
  title = {Freelance web designer says a longtime client cancelled a commissioned clinic website by text, saying Claude had built the whole site (first-person)},
  author = {NOPE},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {AI incidents},
  url = {https://nope.net/incidents/2026-freelance-web-designer-says-longtime-client-cancelled-commissioned-website-after-building-it-with-claude-first-person}
}

Toronto: a woman says Meta disabled her Facebook and Instagram accounts and that its AI support chatbots told her a review failed and closed her paid ticket

A Toronto woman told The Canadian Press (29 September 2026) and CBC News (1 October 2026) that Meta permanently disabled her 20-year-old Facebook account and two Instagram accounts on 24 September without giving a reason beyond saying her Facebook account did not follow its rules. She says she could reach only Meta's AI support chatbots. One told her the review she requested was unsuccessful; she told CBC that within minutes of pressing the appeal button she was told her case was closed and she could not appeal again. She then paid for the standard Meta Verified subscription expecting human support, and its support chatbot closed her ticket and told her she had reached her limit of support interactions. She describes losing 20 years of memories and contacts as isolating and says she has lost client opportunities for her side business. She suspects an attempted hack. Meta did not comment on her case to either outlet, and no restoration is reported.

Medium ChatGPT

Saginaw, Michigan: a credit union CEO used ChatGPT to put herself and family members in 'Lake America' sweatshirts in a photo taken before a trip to Halifax; after her sister reposted it publicly without its AI label she says she received death threats and the family came home early, and on 23 September 2026 the credit union said she was no longer employed

The chief executive of Family First Credit Union in Saginaw, Michigan, told WJRT (ABC12) that before boarding a flight to Halifax, Nova Scotia, on 11 September 2026 she and family members took a photo and put it through ChatGPT to show them wearing 'Lake America' sweatshirts, a joke about the US president's order renaming Lake Ontario. She posted it to her private Facebook page with a marker saying it contained AI content; her sister reposted it publicly without the marker while they were in Halifax, and it spread in Canada as if the family had worn the shirts. The backlash concerned the image's political message; she said she would understand the anger of anyone in Halifax who thought the family had walked in wearing those sweatshirts. She said she was getting death threats and the family returned early; by 16 September she was back in the US. She called the post poor judgment, said she would not use AI again and that AI 'can make people think something's real that's not'. On 23 September the credit union said she was no longer an employee, effective immediately; it has not said whether she resigned or was dismissed, or why.

Medium Sentinel AI (reported)

Lawsuit says a New Jersey employer dismissed a remote worker who sought exemption from AI facial-recognition webcam monitoring

NorthJersey.com reported on 5 October 2026 that a former remote employee of Sutherland Healthcare Solutions, based in Clifton, New Jersey, sued the company in New Jersey Superior Court in Atlantic City on 23 September 2026. According to the complaint as reported, the employer told the employee it would start monitoring her through her work laptop's webcam with software called Sentinel AI, which would use AI and facial recognition to confirm that she was the person at the desk, taking 160 still images in an eight-hour shift. The employee raised concerns in writing about the AI seeing inside her home and about whether the data would be securely stored, said the monitoring had increased her anxiety and stress and worsened a medical condition, and asked for a full or partial exemption as a reasonable accommodation. The suit says the request was denied, she was given a 24-hour ultimatum on 13 August 2026 to submit to the monitoring or resign, an offer to avoid the software by commuting to the office was rejected because it would require six hours of travel time, and her employment was terminated on 8 September 2026. The suit alleges that the employer violated New Jersey's anti-discrimination laws and retaliated against her for requesting reasonable accommodations. Sutherland did not respond to the outlet's requests for comment, and the allegations have not been tested in court.

High Unidentified image tool

Jeju: police refer a middle-school student over secretly filming teachers and making sexual deepfake composites; teachers dispute victim count and legal aid

Jeju Dongbu police announced on 23 September 2026 that a student at a middle school on Jeju had been referred to prosecutors without detention on 17 September for violating the Sexual Violence Punishment Act (filming with a camera or similar device). The student's phone was voluntarily submitted by his guardians and forensically examined; the examination found footage relating to some teachers and some sexual composites, and the student admitted the conduct. News1 reported that the student was booked for filming a teacher's body with his phone during a school field trip around mid-July 2026, that the offending had continued for several months with multiple victims, and that police found no indication the composites had been distributed. Police told Seoul Shinmun there were more victim teachers than the one first reported but withheld the number to avoid secondary harm, and that no student at the school was a victim; the Jeju teachers' union questioned whether the full scope of harm had been established. According to the union, two months on the victim teachers were receiving hospital treatment and counselling while teaching daily, gave police statements on 14 September without a lawyer, attended the regional teachers' rights protection committee on 17 September without institutional support, wrote the criminal complaint themselves, and were offered 3.3 million won in legal fees for all of them together, payable after the case ends; two requests to meet the superintendent were not accepted. On 29 September one of the victim teachers gave a press interview at the Jeju Teachers' Union office. She said that early in the investigation she had seen on the student's phone material showing other teachers and current students, had made a list of the people and types of harm, and that the material shown to her at the police victim examination was considerably less than what she had seen; Yonhap-chain outlets quote her as saying the students she recognised numbered 10 to 20 and that a graduate had suffered worse deepfakes. She said investigators asked the school only to identify the perpetrator and never requested material to identify the students in the footage, and that the school sent parents a letter premised on there being no student victims. Police replied that phone forensics had been thorough, that every act beyond social norms had been identified and proven, and that one student victim had been confirmed, a student at a different school. The teachers were notified on 22 September that the case had gone to the prosecution and on 24 September that it had been sent to the court's juvenile division as a juvenile protection case, before they had submitted further evidence and a victim opinion. The teacher said the original complaint had also asked police to examine whether physical contact in 2025 was forcible molestation and whether repeated approaching and waiting in 2026 was stalking, and Halla Ilbo reports that such conduct is said to date from 2025. Yonhap-chain reports describe the charged victims as five teachers. The same day the education office briefed on legal-aid rules (up to 6.6 million won per instance when a teacher is sued, 3.3 million won per case when a teacher files a complaint; office lawyers cannot act as a teacher's private counsel), said it had linked the teachers to the national Digital Sexual Crime Victim Support Center, announced an integrated support system through a hotline, and its section head said the office was sorry that early support had not been felt. The KTU Jeju branch (28 September) and the Jeju Teachers' Union (14 and 29 September) demand a victim-support system, per-teacher legal fees paid in advance and a dedicated support team. On 6 October 2026 Seogwipo Broadcasting reported, citing people in education and a tipster, that the education authority had finally rejected the victim teachers' application for lawyer fees for an additional criminal complaint, saying in a written opinion that with a police investigation already under way a further complaint could hardly stop or prevent the infringement of their teaching, so the support requirements were not met; critics contrast this with full legal-cost support in earlier sexual-offence cases.

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