Feb 2025GermanyUnidentified image tool
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported on 15 October 2026 that a tipster who monitors abuse of women streamers had traced a schoolboy at a school near Hannover, Germany, who distributed AI-generated nude images of female classmates. According to the tipster, on 20 February 2025 a Telegram user wrote to him privately, said he had made nude images of classmates with artificial intelligence and sent him images unasked. The tipster says the images were made from the girls' Snapchat and Instagram photos and from photos taken of them in the classroom, and showed them nude and in sexual positions. He identified two of the depicted girls online, worked out the boy's school and class, and phoned the headteacher, who confirmed his call to the newspaper. The Hannover police confirmed the facts, said the person identified is a child below the age of criminal responsibility, and said officers held a warning talk with him and explained the possible consequences of his use of digital media. The headteacher says the pupil no longer attends the school and that, on police advice, the girls were not told. The school is not named.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Internal Action
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 18/10/2026
6 May 2026United StatesClaude Console (reported)
In the federal lawsuit over the Trump administration's mass layoffs (AFGE v. Trump, Northern District of California), a partner at Binnall Law Group filed an emergency motion on the night of 6 May 2026, in the Eastern District of Virginia, to quash a deposition subpoena directed at a former Homeland Security official the firm represents; that court transferred the motion to the Northern District of California. On 13 May Judge Susan Illston denied the motion. Her order says the court was troubled by multiple citations to case quotations that do not exist in the cases cited, that counsel was unaware of these quotations when questioned at the hearing and had no explanation for them, and it ordered counsel to explain the fabricated quotations in a declaration under penalty of perjury by 15 May. In that declaration the partner said he had used Claude Console, an enterprise AI platform, to create an initial draft, that an associate told him she had checked the citations, and that he did not double-check the quotations. He apologised to the court and opposing counsel and attached a corrected version. The firm's founding partner declared that firm policy prohibits using tools like Claude for legal drafting, that the error breached its policies and training, and that the firm had opened an internal investigation. On 20 Oct 2026 the court administratively closed the related miscellaneous case, saying the motion had been adjudicated and no further filings were anticipated. Neither order read mentions a sanction, and whether one was imposed is not established.
Core concern Low reported severity Internal Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 18/10/2026
Aug 2025Event location unknownUnidentified video tool
In a December 2025 investigation, the fact-checker Full Fact reported that social media accounts were using AI-generated deepfakes of real doctors and academics, made from real footage, to promote supplements, with many links to the US company Wellness Nest. Professor David Taylor-Robinson of the University of Liverpool learned on 11 August 2025 that TikTok carried footage of his real conference talk altered so that a fake version of him discussed a supposed menopause symptom and recommended a Wellness Nest probiotic; The Guardian reported 14 such videos. TikTok at first found no violation, and removed the account after Full Fact contacted it on 24 September, calling the delay a moderating error. He said he became more and more irritated, that removal was a faff and that people who know him could have been taken in. Full Fact also found eight videos of Duncan Selbie, former head of Public Health England, who called them a complete fake. Wellness Nest denied running the accounts or using AI-generated content. The tool used is not identified.
Core concern Low reported severity Internal Action
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources · Added 18/10/2026
Aug 2026United StatesUnidentified document-analysis tool
In a memorandum of decision issued in early August 2026, a Connecticut Superior Court judge found that a motion for default and a notice filed on 24 July 2026 by a self-represented plaintiff, in a suit against a healthcare provider over access to records, carried text in tiny white type that was invisible to a human reader but legible to software. The concealed text told any AI model reviewing the filing to make its output agree with the filing and to work toward reversing the Chief Clerk's denial of his default request. After the court gave notice of a sanctions hearing, he hid further messages in later filings, which he said were jokes. The court treated the first instruction as a prompt injection, did not believe his explanation that he was auditing the court's use of AI, and rescinded his ability to file electronically, so that future filings must be made on paper at the clerk's office; Ars Technica reports that no monetary penalty was imposed. The court said the Connecticut Judicial Branch does not use AI to review or decide filings and that the motion was denied on its merits from a printed copy, so the hidden text affected no ruling. The plaintiff told Reuters, according to Ars Technica, that his intent was to audit the court.
AI relation unknown Low reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution established · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 18/10/2026
Aug 2026MalaysiaUnidentified image tool
Negeri Sembilan police said on 17 October 2026, in a statement reported by Bernama and RTM, that they had received five reports, lodged by parents or guardians between 20 and 23 August 2026, over the circulation of photographs of female students at a secondary school in Seremban that were edited using AI to resemble pornographic images. The police describe the victims as aged 14 to 17 and the suspect as an upper-secondary student whom the school suspended for five days in August; the case is being investigated under child sexual offences law and the Penal Code. A lawyer for a group of parents told a press conference that the images came to light on 12 August, when a younger pupil found them on an unlocked phone at school, alleged that the student made about 200 such images, and said the school had acknowledged more than 300 affected girls at a September meeting; he said there is no direct evidence that the images were sold. A mother said her child still has trouble sleeping every night. After the girls were questioned at the police headquarters on 17 October, their lawyers alleged that police had made them face the suspect during identification. The AI tool is not identified.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 7 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 18/10/2026
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
Nov 2025ChinaUnidentified image tool
Police in Yangpu district, Shanghai, say a customer extorted restaurants with medical records he had forged using AI software; Xinhua dates his first successful claim to November 2025. In the police account (Shangguan News, 26 February 2026) he claimed to have fallen ill after eating at a barbecue restaurant, showed a hospital visit record and medical invoice, and demanded 2,000 yuan in medical costs, threatening complaints and publicity; the restaurant paid. Police checked with other diners and the hospital, found he had no hospital record and the materials were forged, and say he confessed to using AI software to alter images of other people's medical records, replacing the name, date and amount. Police say he succeeded twice and failed twice, obtaining 2,500 yuan, and that he also filed complaints to market regulators with the forged material to pressure the restaurants. According to Xinhua's June report and the Procuratorate Daily, the Yangpu District People's Court convicted him of extortion and sentenced him to four months' criminal detention, suspended for four months, and a 2,000 yuan fine.
Contextual tracker case Low reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 3 sources · 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
Jun 2026Event location unknownUnidentified AI jury tool
In two public posts to r/offmychest, on 6 June and 9 October 2026, a person writes that after a recurring argument about chores their fiancé told them he had used an online AI jury to decide which of them was right, that the 'jury' said he was right, and that he then refused to discuss the argument, saying the AI had told him he was right and the poster was being unreasonable. The poster says they left to stay with a relative on the morning of the first post. In the October update they write that the relationship is over, that they cancelled a wedding planned for late November and tried to recover what money they could, and that they ended things because their ex-fiancé would not discuss the dispute and 'kept on harping about the AI saying he was right'. The posts do not say that the poster saw the AI output; what it said is known only through the fiancé's account as relayed by the poster. The tool is not named. The poster also describes a longer-running disagreement over housework that predates the AI use. The account is uncorroborated.
Contextual tracker case Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · 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
Jul 2025United StatesAbridge (reported)
A proposed class action filed in San Diego Superior Court in late 2025 alleges that Sharp HealthCare, which began using the AI documentation app Abridge in April 2025, recorded doctor-patient conversations without telling patients, sent the audio to the vendor's servers and used it to generate draft medical notes. According to the lawsuit as reported by KPBS, the named plaintiff discovered that a July appointment at a Sharp clinic had been recorded only when he read his medical notes; the clinic apologised, acknowledged the recording and told him the file could stay on the vendor's servers for about a month. The complaint also alleges that Abridge inserted statements into charts that patients had been advised of the recording and had consented, when the plaintiff says that never happened. It seeks damages, corrected medical records and an order against using the tool without consent, and estimates that more than 100,000 patients may have been recorded. Sharp told reporters it could not comment on pending litigation. The allegations have not been tested in court in the sources read.
Contextual tracker case Low reported severity Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · 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
May 2026BrazilGalileu
In May 2026 a judge of the 3rd Labour Court of Parauapebas, in the Brazilian state of Pará, fined two lawyers about R$84,000 after text in white font on a white background was found in a document they filed for a worker in a labour claim. According to the sentence as reported by G1, the hidden text was detected while the judgment was being drafted with Galileu, a generative AI tool the labour courts use to help judges and staff draft sentences, and its evident intention was to make the AI produce a superficial defence or a compromised draft judgment. The judge called the technique prompt injection. The lawyers said they disagreed with the decision and that there was never any command to manipulate the judge's decision, describing the text as an attempt to protect their client from the AI; one of them said she did not work on labour cases. In October 2026 the regional labour court announced that a Connecticut Superior Court judge had cited the decision when sanctioning a litigant for misuse of AI.
AI relation unknown Medium reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution disputed · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 16/10/2026
2026IsraelChatGPT (reported)
Ynetnews reported on 12 April 2026 that doctors at Meir Medical Center had seen three teenage boys lose a testicle in the past month after arriving too late for treatment of testicular torsion. The mother of one of them told Ynet that when her son complained of lower abdominal pain she thought it might be constipation and consulted ChatGPT, which gave several options, said it could be something serious and that they should get it checked, but also said it was relatively rare, so they thought they could wait. After two days without improvement the boy's testicle was swollen and he could hardly walk; an urgent care clinic sent them to hospital and ChatGPT, consulted again, told them to go to the emergency room immediately. At the hospital, late at night, doctors diagnosed severe torsion, operated and removed the testicle; the boy is recovering at home. The doctors attribute the month's unusually high rate of complications mainly to delayed arrival at the emergency room, which they say the war has partly influenced.
Contextual tracker case High reported severity Involving minors Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 16/10/2026