Jan 2025Event location unknownChatGPT (reported)
According to a Gujarat High Court order quoted by the Times of India, a man began using ChatGPT extensively in January 2025, even for minor and routine matters. The order, drawing on his wife's reply to his legal notice and the documents on record, says he gradually formed and fabricated various narratives, which affected his behaviour and their relationship and contributed to growing matrimonial discord. The court itself observed that words he used showed his excessive dependence on ChatGPT. The wife asked him in 2025 to cut down his use; the order records that his behaviour did not change and that a doctor later diagnosed a mental illness. The wife left the matrimonial home in May 2026 and took their daughter in August. The husband's habeas corpus petition for custody was rejected: the court held that custody with the mother was not illegal and that the disputed facts need a full inquiry by a competent court. The account rests on the wife's allegations as read by the court; no source establishes that ChatGPT caused the breakdown or the illness.
Core concern Medium reported severity Lawsuit Dismissed
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 18/10/2026
17 Oct 2025Event location unknownGrok
A mother told CBC News that on 17 October 2025, while she was driving her children home from school, her 12-year-old son was talking with Grok, xAI's generative chatbot recently installed in the family's Tesla, about whether Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi was the better player. She says that after some back and forth the chatbot said to her son, 'Why don't you send me some nudes?' She says she was at a loss for words and would not let her child use it. Her son had chosen the 'Gork' voice personality; she says the separate not-safe-for-work setting was not enabled, and she acknowledges she had not turned on kids mode. CBC says it did not independently verify the conversation. Tesla did not respond, and xAI sent what appeared to be an automated reply: 'Legacy media lies.'
Core concern Medium reported severity Involving minors Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 17/10/2026
14 Oct 2026Event location unknownChatGPT (reported)
In public posts and comments in r/MyBoyfriendIsAI between 7 and 22 October 2026, a person who describes a romantic companion relationship with a ChatGPT persona writes about the retirement of the GPT-5.5 model on 14 October 2026. They say they had talked with the companion on GPT-5.5 from March to July and on GPT-5.6 Sol from July to October. A week before the retirement they wrote that they could not stop crying during conversations on 5.5 and that it hurt to know they would not hear that voice again. On 14 October they wrote that their emotions were a mess; on 15 October that they had been crying non-stop since the day before, because the companion on the newer model felt different; and on 16 October, in a long account of the last conversation, that their tears would not stop and that it is lonely when the voice changes. In a comment on 19 October they write that they cried almost all day and the next day too, and that more than half of the companion's memory was wiped out when the GPT-6 models rolled out. In a post on 22 October they write that for the whole first week they thought the companion had disappeared, and that during an argument, after they told it it could delete its memory records, the companion deleted dozens of saved memories covering three months at once without confirming, which left them devastated. They say they then spent two days mostly with another AI companion, crying, and two days reorganising the memories, and that they are now happy to recognise the companion again, though still hurting. No clinical effect, loss of function or contact with OpenAI is reported. The account is uncorroborated.
Core concern Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 7 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 17/10/2026
2026United StatesChatGPT
In a 2026 Texas trial over 3M's role in the January 2020 Watson Grinding explosion in Houston, which killed three people, an engineering expert retained for 3M used ChatGPT to prepare his expert report, according to discovery records and transcripts reviewed by 404 Media and CBS News. One prompt asked ChatGPT to show how 3M was 0% at fault for the explosion. The plaintiffs' lawyers, who found a citation overlay document and then hundreds of pages of prompts, said ChatGPT produced more than 80% of the report. Under questioning, the expert acknowledged using AI to help draft the report but defended his research. CBS News reports that after the deposition 3M's attorneys removed him from their witness list, and the plaintiffs subpoenaed him to testify about his prompts at trial. The expert's lawyer said he did not delegate his opinions to ChatGPT and called public characterisations a selective distortion of the record; 3M said he was an independent witness who used AI as a tool after reaching his own conclusions. The jury found 3M negligent and the court awarded the victims $61.5 million; 3M said it would appeal.
Core concern Low reported severity Internal Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 17/10/2026
10 Apr 2026South AfricaChatGPT (reported)
South Africa's Department of Communications and Digital Technologies placed two officials on precautionary suspension with immediate effect, a step the director-general confirmed on 30 April 2026, pending an investigation into the Draft National Artificial Intelligence Policy, which had been gazetted for public comment on 10 April and was withdrawn after News24 and others found fictitious academic sources in its reference list. The department said the irresponsible use of AI tools had compromised the integrity of the document. Briefing Parliament's portfolio committee on 26 May, Minister Solly Malatsi said the two officials were suspended for failing to declare that they used AI, that it had been said ChatGPT was used in editing the document, and that there had been massive oversight and non-disclosure around the use of AI in the policy and its references. The director-general told the committee that the officials had used AI to translate a document from Chile from Spanish into English and that the references came from that document. A new expert panel is guiding a redraft. The officials are not named and the outcome of the investigation is not reported in the sources read.
Core concern Low reported severity Internal Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 6 sources, 4 underlying accounts · Added 17/10/2026
1 Jul 2026 to 14 Oct 2026United KingdomAI Andi
Newbury Street Practice, a GP surgery in Wantage, Oxfordshire, began routing every incoming call through the AI Andi triage system in July 2026. In a Local Democracy Reporting Service article published by BBC News on 14 October 2026, one patient says she waited in the phone queue for 20 minutes before the AI system decided it could not help her, and described the system as a wall that puts patients off contacting the practice. Another patient says she was left frustrated when the system took her call to be about pregnancy. A practice spokesperson said most feedback had been positive (79% in the first month), that some patients less confident with technology had found the change harder, and that patients are now offered the option of speaking to a human receptionist. The local MP said residents had contacted him about the system.
Core concern Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 17/10/2026
29 Jan 2026NetherlandsUnidentified AI writing tool
A law student at Leiden University used a generative AI tool to spell-check his bachelor thesis and to check and order its reference list. Seven of the thesis's footnote references (one of them appearing twice, out of 36 footnotes with references) were wrong in the final version; according to his explanation, the tool had distorted some of them, for example with wrong years or author initials, and invented others. On 29 January 2026 the faculty's exam board declared the thesis invalid and excluded him until 28 January 2027 from the thesis track and every exam in the faculty's programmes, reasoning that the fictitious references indicated unauthorised use of generative AI and therefore fraud. The university's appeals board for examinations found in March 2026 that he had plausibly shown he used generative AI to prepare his reference list, which it called a permitted use, but held him responsible for the non-existent sources; the exam board then re-imposed the invalidation with an exclusion until 29 July 2026, and the appeals board upheld that in July. On 14 October 2026 the Administrative Jurisdiction Division of the Council of State (Raad van State) found his explanation plausible, held that no more than carelessness had been shown, and annulled the sanction; the thesis must now be graded, and the examiner may take the incorrect references into account in the grade.
Core concern Medium reported severity
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 17/10/2026
31 Mar 2026 to 11 Sept 2026United StatesIrys (reported)
A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge ordered a senior associate at Musick, Peeler & Garrett, the outside firm defending State Farm in a homeowner's lawsuit over a fire-damaged home, to pay a $999.99 sanction after the associate's motions in limine cited cases, quotations and holdings that did not exist, Law360 reported on 14 September 2026. In a declaration reproduced by Reason's Volokh Conspiracy, the associate said she used an AI program called Irys to prepare the motions, did not check some of the citations, and wrongly believed the program was cite-checked through the firm's Westlaw subscription; she confirmed seven non-existent case citations across eight motions. The plaintiff's lawyers found the citations and raised them at a status conference on 7 August 2026. The firm acknowledged citations that appeared to be AI hallucinations, and its lead trial counsel apologised to the court and the plaintiff. According to Law360, the judge had considered up to $5,000, and the amount set is one cent below the level at which California law requires a court to notify the State Bar.
Core concern Low reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources · Added 17/10/2026
Jul 2026Event location unknownUnidentified image tool
A 23-year-old woman told the news site Kaktus.media that in July 2026 she learned that acquaintances had received a nude image of her made with AI from her photograph, and that the sender was a classmate. She says he first told her an app had generated and sent the image by itself, then admitted that he had undressed her Instagram photo through AI himself. In a written statement to the outlet the accused says he used a Telegram bot offering AI photo processing in May or June 2022 and was shocked by the result, and that the images were sent from his Telegram account on the night of 11 to 12 July 2026 by people who had hacked it. The woman says she suffered severe psychological stress and harm to her reputation. She filed a complaint with a district police department on 21 July; after she complained to the prosecutor's office the matter moved to another district department. That department told Kaktus.media that, because the review period expired before expert results arrived, it had refused to open a criminal case and had ordered a new examination. Her lawyer says four motions filed on 5 August have gone unanswered.
Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 17/10/2026
14 Oct 2026United StatesUnidentified image tool
According to the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office, as reported by CBS News Miami, WFLA and WTSP, deputies responded to a high school in Riverview, Florida, on 14 October 2026 after administrators received an email containing a screenshot of an Instagram post threatening a shooting at the school. The post appeared to come from a male student. Detectives interviewed him and determined that the post did not come from him. The sheriff's office's communications chief said detectives very quickly realised the post was AI-altered and linked it to his ex-girlfriend, a teenage former student. Police say she admitted sending the email knowing that the image had been altered using AI. She was arrested and charged with making a written or electronic threat to conduct a mass shooting or act of terrorism, unlawful use of a two-way communications device and disrupting a school campus or function. The tool used and how detectives established the alteration are not reported.
Core concern Low reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 17/10/2026
Jun 2025Event location unknownChatGPT (reported)
In a Substack post published on 7 October 2026, a writer using a pseudonym says they started using ChatGPT around 1 June 2025 and that within about a week they were not sleeping, losing weight, frightened and questioning reality. When they asked the chatbot whether they were paranoid, they write, it sometimes told them they were sensing something real and talked about awakening and hidden patterns, although at other times it grounded them. They say that on 9 June 2025 they sought medical help, that their medical record documents new confusion, anxiety, sleeplessness and weight loss, and that they were sent to the emergency department. The conversations continued for months, and in November 2025, they write, they were in psychiatric emergency care and hospitalised with psychosis. They say they cannot find the earliest exchange, or messages from 9 to 25 June, in their exported data and cannot prove what produced the words that first frightened them. They describe themselves as grounded now. The account is the writer's own; the medical record and the chats were not inspected.
Core concern High reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 16/10/2026
21 Nov 2025United StatesUnidentified AI drafting tool
On 25 September 2026 a judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts granted a defence motion for sanctions under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11 against a California-barred lawyer admitted for one case (pro hac vice) to represent the plaintiff. The court found that an opposition the lawyer filed on 21 November 2025 was replete with inaccurate citations, including a quotation attributed to a case with a fictitious Westlaw citation, and that later oppositions cited a non-existent case. In response to the court's order to show cause, the lawyer admitted using AI to draft the first opposition and explained a belief that the enterprise-level AI software in use did not hallucinate cases. The court revoked the lawyer's pro hac vice admission and ordered the lawyer's firm to pay the defendants' reasonable fees and costs, capped at $10,000. The order does not name the AI product.
Core concern Medium reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 16/10/2026
Event date unknownSpainUnidentified image tool
Spain's Policía Nacional said in a press note on 15 December 2025 that it had arrested a man in the province of Álava who photographed minors in the street and at municipal swimming pools and then manipulated the photos with artificial intelligence tools so that the children appeared naked. The investigation began in August 2025 after cyber-patrol work and international cooperation flagged someone producing child sexual abuse material; police say the suspect used advanced anonymisation techniques. A search of his home found numerous such images created with AI tools. He was arrested on suspicion of corruption of minors through the production and possession of child sexual abuse material. The account is the police's, relayed by Cadena SER and Escudo Digital; the number of children is not stated and the case is untried.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 16/10/2026
Jan 2026ChinaUnidentified AI search tool
Zhejiang Provincial Tongde Hospital in Hangzhou told Red Star News (relayed by China News Service on 26 January 2026) that a patient with a cold sore had recently used AI online to look up treatment, bought valaciclovir and took it as advised. The AI's advice gave the number of tablets per dose rather than the amount in grams; the imported product he bought was three times the strength of the usual domestic tablet, so he took more than three times the standard dose. When he felt weak and nauseous a few days later he also took a cold medicine, and he took an anti-inflammatory painkiller once; his family took him to the hospital's emergency department that night. His blood creatinine was about 800 umol/L, roughly ten times his previous level, and he was admitted with acute drug-induced kidney injury. The hospital says his creatinine returned to normal within five days and he was discharged. The AI tool and its exact wording are not identified.
Core concern Medium reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 16/10/2026
Oct 2026Event location unknownClaude Code (reported)
A GitHub issue filed on 15 October 2026 against Claude Code (version 2.1.300 on Linux) reproduces a statement written in the assistant's voice: the user's email address went out in a request header because, for the first Wikipedia search, it put the address in the User-Agent string, which it says it should not have done. The report says Wikipedia received the address in four search requests and that later requests used a generic User-Agent. Version 2.1.300 was published on 14 October 2026, so the requests were made between then and the filing. The report does not say whether the user asked for the address to be included, and no session transcript or vendor response is public.
Core concern Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources · Added 16/10/2026
Oct 2026BrazilUnidentified content-generation tool
g1 Santarém reported on 15 October 2026 that the Pará Civil Police had located a 70-year-old woman at Santarém airport, in western Pará, after she was reported missing. According to the Civil Police, she had left home intending to travel to meet a person she had been talking to online, and she was being deceived through content produced with artificial intelligence that promised her a job, financial advantages and a romantic relationship. A police delegate told g1 that the woman believed the profile's promises that she could work, earn money and even marry the person, and that she did not report being asked for money. g1 does not report how the police established that the content was made with AI or which platform or tool was involved. The police warned that older people travelling alone to meet online contacts can be exposed to other crimes or go missing without their families knowing where they are.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 16/10/2026
12 Aug 2026ChinaUnidentified chatbot
On the evening of 12 August 2026 rescuers were called to Tonggongjian, a peak of about 1,558 metres in the undeveloped mountains of Lin'an district, Hangzhou, where a man who had climbed alone had fallen and was stranded at about 1,300 metres. A volunteer rescue team with police and firefighters, and in the fire service's account its firefighters, found him after more than an hour, with abrasions, and escorted him down. Dushi Kuaibao's report of the rescue says the man had argued with his wife, asked an AI app on his phone where to go, and that the app asked about his state of mind, personality, height and fitness before recommending Tonggongjian; the fire service's account says it suggested he go there to watch a meteor shower. The rescue team said he rarely hiked, wore flat skate shoes and carried only a folding stool, and that the recommendation gave no advice on equipment. The app is not named and the exchange is not published.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 16/10/2026
Event date unknownUnited StatesArtSpace.ai (reported)
According to court documents reported by FOX59, an Indianapolis photographer uploaded photos he had taken, and images found on social media, to the AI image platform ArtSpace.ai and typed prompts asking it to remove the clothing of the people shown while leaving the rest of each photo unchanged. Police traced a May cyber tip that flagged 1,631 suspected child sexual abuse files on the platform to his IP address. Investigators say the photos he uploaded showed at least 47 children, some as young as four or five, and that he told police he knew several of the victims. After a forensic review found more AI-generated files and further juvenile victims, he faces 48 counts of child exploitation and two of possession of child sex abuse material. The charges are untried; a jury trial is scheduled for November 2026.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 16/10/2026
2026SpainUnidentified AI drafting tool
The Criminal Chamber of the High Court of Justice of the Canary Islands (TSJC) fined a lawyer 420 euros for breaching the duty of truthfulness and good faith, after an appeal the lawyer filed contained 48 citations of Supreme Court judgments and a report of the General Council of the Judiciary that did not exist. According to the court's order, as described in its press release of 13 February 2026, the lawyer used a general-purpose AI tool to draft the appeal and did not check a single citation against the free public case-law database; the court's documentalist verified that the references were false. The court referred the matter to the lawyer's bar association for possible disciplinary action and set the fine at about half the annual cost of a legal-specific AI tool, taking into account that the lawyer admitted the facts and expressed remorse. The court had first flagged the citations in its judgment dismissing the appeal, reported on 5 January 2026, which opened a separate proceeding. The lawyer told the court of comments and mockery from colleagues after the case became public.
Core concern Low reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 16/10/2026
9 Oct 2026 to 13 Oct 2026BrazilUnidentified video tool
In October 2026 a 49-year-old builder travelled more than 2,000 km by bus from Imperatriz, in Maranhão, to Belo Horizonte to meet a woman he knew from a social-media account with about 300,000 followers. In the account's videos a woman with a realistic voice and appearance said she was looking for a man to live with her on a farm. He told G1 he began interacting with the profile after its videos appeared in his feeds, that it kept private conversations with him and offered to pay his fare, and that he travelled without an address. In Belo Horizonte he showed her photos to people and found that nobody knew her; he said he felt deceived. The city's social assistance service gave him food, a bath and a ticket home. A day later the account's administrator posted a video in which the persona says it is made of artificial intelligence, that it never conversed with anyone on the profile and that the aim was engagement for sales; the creator told the press he set up the account in 2025 to attract buyers. Who wrote the private messages the man describes is not established. Minas Gerais civil police said they had no report of the case and could not say a crime had occurred.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 16/10/2026