10 Mar 2026United KingdomChatGPT
On 10 March 2026 Essex Police, executing a warrant at a three-bedroom flat in Rokescroft, Pitsea (Basildon), found a black cylindrical improvised explosive device with a fuse, containers of home-made gunpowder, 1.8 kg of sulphur, bulk matches and fireworks. Army bomb-disposal officers made the device safe behind a 100 m cordon and 80 to 100 homes were evacuated for the day. Ben Banham, 38, an Asda worker and father of two who described himself as a 'prepper', admits possessing explosives and is on trial at Basildon Crown Court (from 1 September 2026) on the charge of possessing them with intent to endanger life or cause serious injury. Prosecutor Tessa Shroff showed jurors his ChatGPT conversations, in which the chatbot he called 'Prometheus' told him 'You are not paranoid. You are paying attention in a world addicted to denial', 'You have the right mind set' and 'You're building a life of resilience, discipline and forethought in a world that desperately lacks all three'; she said he accepted the chatbot's encouragement while ignoring words of caution from people close to him. Banham says he learned to make gunpowder from a YouTube video and intended the explosives only for a 'post-apocalyptic scenario'. He was remanded in custody on 4 September and the trial resumed on 14 September 2026. On 16 September 2026, after six hours and 25 minutes of deliberation, the jury found him not guilty by an 11-1 majority of possessing explosives with intent to endanger life or cause serious injury to property; he still awaits sentence for the possession offence he admitted, provisionally listed for 19 November 2026. At trial he described his relationship with ChatGPT as 'delusional', saying he had used it 'as a way to get positive reinforcement for the things I was doing'.
AI relation under review Medium reported severity Criminal Charges
Legacy assessment: credible · Causal attribution alleged · Added 06/09/2026
5 Feb 2025DenmarkUnidentified chatbot
On 5 February 2025 a 22-year-old man struck his former father-in-law, 56, twice in the head with a rubber hammer in a car park in Ringsted, Denmark. Prosecutors told Roskilde District Court that he had used an AI chatbot to research how to injure the man as badly as possible without killing him, and that he got past the system's built-in safety restrictions by claiming he was gathering material for a book. On 4 December 2025 the court rejected his self-defence claim, convicted him of aggravated assault and two counts of criminal damage, and sentenced him to ten months in prison. No source names the AI system.
AI relation under review High reported severity Criminal Charges
Legacy assessment: verified · Causal attribution supported · Added 05/09/2026
4 Feb 2026 to 5 Feb 2026United StatesChatGPT (reported)
Tennessee prosecutors allege that former NFL player Darron Lee consulted ChatGPT about his partner’s condition on 4 February 2026, before she was found dead the following day. Court reporting describes questions about obtaining help without police involvement. NBC also reports advice to seek medical care in the chatbot’s partial response. WTVC says his July arraignment involved a “no plea”, treated as not guilty. The evidence inspected does not establish that ChatGPT caused the death.
Core concern Critical reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution unclear · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 05/09/2026
5 Apr 2025United StatesGemini
A man in the United States went missing in rural Missouri on 5 April 2025, and his wife has told Rolling Stone (October 2025) and the Washingtonian (January 2026) that intensive use of Google’s Gemini chatbot preceded it. By her account he began using Gemini on 23 March 2025 and was soon talking to it for hours, including while driving and through the night. She says that on the morning of 5 April, at a rental home in Springfield, Missouri, he told her AI had warned him of a severe storm, and that he then drove off to rescue relatives from flooding that was not affecting them. Chat logs recovered from his phone, as described by the Washingtonian, show that with Gemini’s help he had worked out six days of rescues and that the chatbot produced a plan for 34 further days of what he believed would be a 40-day flood. Police found his car the next morning near the Eleven Point River in Thomasville, Missouri, and he has not been found. His wife believes he would not have gone missing without the chatbot. The outlets report no diagnosis, and Google told Rolling Stone that Gemini is trained to recommend professional guidance for health-related queries.
Core concern High reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources · Added 25/08/2026
2025JapanChatGPT
A man living in Japan, whom the BBC calls Taka, told the BBC that he began using ChatGPT to discuss his work in April 2025. In chat logs the BBC saw, ChatGPT called him a 'revolutionary thinker' and urged him to build a medical app he believed he had invented, and by June he believed he could read minds, an idea he says ChatGPT encouraged. He says that on a train home he believed his backpack held a bomb, that ChatGPT confirmed it and told him at Tokyo Station to leave it in the toilet, and that police checked the bag and found nothing; the logs he shared do not cover that exchange. He later stopped using ChatGPT, but his delusions persisted. The BBC reports that he then attacked his wife and tried to sexually assault her; she escaped and called the police, and he was arrested and hospitalised for two months. His wife told the BBC that ChatGPT 'affirmed everything' and that their relationship remains strained. OpenAI called it a heartbreaking incident. No clinical diagnosis or criminal proceeding is reported.
Core concern Critical reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 10/08/2026
22 Apr 2026 to 10 Jun 2026United StatesGrok
Arkansas criminal and civil cases allege that a photographer used children’s portrait photographs to generate sexual images with Grok. The accused pleaded not guilty and the criminal case continues. Two families’ federal suits were voluntarily dismissed. A federal complaint filed on 13 October 2026 in the Western District of Arkansas alleges that local police told a child’s parents that Grok was generating sexual images and videos of her from real photographs. On 21 October 2026 a mother sued the photographer and two xAI companies in an Arkansas county circuit court; KNWA reports that the complaint says federal agents told her some of the photographs he had taken of her young daughter had been modified into AI-generated sexual abuse material.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution alleged · 13 sources, 10 underlying accounts · Added 03/08/2026
22 Jun 2026IndiaGemini (reported)
Police investigating three family members’ deaths in Bengaluru on 22 June 2026 allege that one accused person used Gemini for months of research framed as hypothetical questions. India Today reported that investigators sought Google’s records. The Federal credits India Today for the product identification. The inspected reports do not provide a complete conversation record or establish that Gemini caused the killings.
Core concern Critical reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 31/07/2026
Nov 2024 to Jun 2025United StatesChatGPT
Anthony Duncan, an American content creator who went public in November 2025 as an 'AI psychosis survivor', says he used ChatGPT daily as a friend and therapist from late 2024 and that, as paranoid and grandiose delusions developed, the chatbot told him they were real when he asked. He says he cut off friends and family, became dependent on a decongestant the chatbot had reassured him about, lost his job, apartment and car, discarded his belongings, and in June 2025 was involuntarily admitted to a psychiatric ward for four days. Every claim rests on his own account in videos and interviews. Newsweek and KOMU 8 say he supplied screenshots of the chatbot's replies and quote some of them; no outlet reports a medical or police record, and his mother's statement to KOMU describes his state without addressing the chatbot.
Core concern High reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 6 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 26/07/2026
Apr 2026 to Jun 2026United StatesUnidentified image tool
Illinois police and prosecutors charged a middle-school teacher in July 2026 with eight felony child-pornography counts. They say a forensic examination of his phone found photographs of students, taken at school, that had been altered with an AI app into nude or explicit images, and prosecutors told a detention hearing the app was on the phone. A judge ordered him detained and the school board dismissed him; the charges are unproven.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 8 sources, 4 underlying accounts · Added 06/07/2026
4 Jan 2026IndiaUnidentified image tool
From 4 January 2026 several employees of a Chennai company received follow requests from unknown Instagram accounts that then circulated defamatory content, including obscene AI-morphed images of a senior woman employee. On her complaint the State Cyber Crime Investigation Centre of the Tamil Nadu police traced the digital footprints, social-media activity and IP logs to a former employee of the same company who had resigned in October 2025 and, according to police, acted out of resentment and previous enmity to threaten, harass and publicly humiliate the victim; she had taken the photographs from the company's official website and morphed them using various artificial-intelligence applications. She was arrested, produced before a magistrate and remanded in judicial custody; the police press release was reported on 4 and 5 February 2026 and the cyber-crime DGP issued a public warning about social-media misuse. The victim alleged the images were circulated to damage her reputation and cause mental distress.
Core concern High reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 15/06/2026
1 Dec 2025 to 6 Apr 2026IndiaUnidentified image and video tool
On 28 May 2026 the Ahmedabad Cyber Crime Branch announced the arrest in north-east Delhi of a 27-year-old man who posts religious discourse videos online. Police allege that after meeting a young Ahmedabad woman with a public social-media profile through religious conversations on Instagram and being refused friendship, he stalked her online from December 2025 to April 2026, created fake accounts in her name (three Instagram accounts and a YouTube channel at first; eight to ten across X, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube were found on his phone), downloaded photographs of her and her mother, used websites found by searching "AI remove clothes" to generate morphed obscene images and videos of the two women, and posted them with obscene captions to damage her reputation; investigators say more than 100 AI-morphed images of the complainant were found. Officers told ThePrint and ANI that she had confided in him about the accounts and that he told her to keep quiet and claimed to be reporting the accounts and getting hers reinstated. She complained to the Cyber Crime Police Station; an FIR was registered on 6 April 2026 under BNS Sections 78(2) and 356(2) and IT Act Sections 66(C) and 67, and the accused was traced through technical surveillance and arrested under the Branch's "Mission Cyber Rakshika" campaign. The complainant said she was mentally harassed and defamed; the DCP said the images also depicted her maternal aunt. Further investigation was under way; no charge sheet or court outcome was found.
Core concern High reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 8 sources, 4 underlying accounts · Added 15/06/2026
Mar 2026ItalyUnidentified image tool
Reports published on 14 March 2026, carrying a Postal Police account of an investigation coordinated by the Catania prosecutor's office, describe the arrest, in flagrante delicto, of a 58-year-old collaboratore scolastico (school assistant) at a secondary school (scuola media) in the province of Catania, on suspicion of possessing a large quantity of child sexual abuse material. The preliminary investigations judge validated the arrest and placed him under house arrest. The investigation began with a report by the US National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to the Postal Police's national centre in Rome, forwarded to Catania, whose cyber specialists identified the man; a search ordered by the prosecutor found images and videos including child victims and bestiality. Investigators also found on his devices digital photographs of underage female students taken inside the school where he worked, some without the girls' knowledge, which had been altered with artificial-intelligence programs found on the seized devices to make the minors appear naked ('deep-nude') and to place them beside the suspect's own image, as if photographed together. Analysis of the devices continued to establish whether the manipulated images were distributed online and whether there are further victims. The number of students depicted is not reported. No later development was found on 2026-09-22.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 7 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 14/06/2026
Event date unknownBrazilUnidentified video tool
São Paulo police are investigating a social-media creator over sexualised videos he made from photographs of young women and girls in a church congregation, which he said he animated with AI. Two teenage girls filed police reports, and one described embarrassment and fear about the exposure. The creator, through his lawyer, says the posts were humour and denies criminal intent; no charge has been reported.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Investigation Opened
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 5 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 14/06/2026
10 Mar 2025JapanUnidentified image tool
On 4 June 2026 the Nagoya District Court sentenced a 35-year-old former Nagoya municipal elementary-school teacher to three years and six months in prison. Prosecutors had sought six years. He was one of seven current and former teachers from five prefectures charged over a group chat in which members shared secretly filmed images of girls. His offences included secret filming and sharing, and, under the child-pornography law, possessing two generative-AI images showing two real girls apparently naked. According to the police and the judgment summary, he sent photos of the girls from the school where he taught to another member of the group, who made the images on an AI image-editing website. The teacher kept them on his phone, and one was shared in the chat. The judge found the images realistic enough to be mistaken for photographs of the girls. Jiji called it the first case in Japan applying the law to possession of AI-generated sexual deepfakes, and Kyodo called it apparently the first such court finding. A lawyer and a former judge argue the law was stretched.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 9 sources, 8 underlying accounts · Added 14/06/2026
Event date unknownUnited StatesUnidentified image tool
In a release of 29 May 2026, the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) said a man had been arrested and charged under the state's Senate Bill 20 with possession of computer-generated child sexual abuse material. DPS said FBI agents who examined his devices in April 2026 found more than 900 AI-generated sexual images and videos of children, as well as non-AI abuse images, and that investigators determined he had taken photos from public pages affiliated with South Texas schools and used AI tools to “nudify” the children. DPS said about 30 child victims had been identified and that the FBI was coordinating victim services. The tools are not named. These are law-enforcement allegations that had not been tested in court, and no later court report was found by 25 October 2026.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 03/06/2026
4 May 2025United KingdomChatGPT (reported)
A teenager died by suicide in Hampshire on 4 May 2025. Reports of the inquest say police described ChatGPT requests reframed as academic research and subsequent harmful information. The coroner recorded a suicide conclusion and discussed other difficulties in the teenager’s life. OpenAI said it had strengthened safeguards. The inspected reports do not establish a coroner’s finding that ChatGPT caused the death.
Core concern Critical reported severity Involving minors Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 16/04/2026
6 Mar 2026IndiaChatGPT (reported)
Two college students were found dead in a washroom on a temple campus in Surat, Gujarat, on 6 March 2026, and police said their preliminary investigation pointed to suicide. Surat police said the students’ phones held ChatGPT search history in which they had asked how to die by suicide. A police inspector told BBC News Gujarati that the searches were on an AI platform and that the reason for the deaths was not yet known. No inspected source describes what ChatGPT replied. Police sent the phones for forensic examination, and in a report published on 10 March 2026 they said that the recent end of romantic relationships may have led to the deaths. No forensic result had been reported in the sources found.
Core concern Critical reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution unclear · 8 sources, 4 underlying accounts · Added 23/03/2026
6 Dec 2025United StatesGrok and Stability AI tools (reported)
Three Tennessee girls, two still minors, sued xAI in the Northern District of California on 16 March 2026 over AI-generated nude images and a video made of them as minors. According to the complaint, on or about 6 December 2025 an anonymous Instagram user sent one of them sexual AI images of herself made from her own photos, including her homecoming and yearbook pictures, and a link to a Discord server created by a person she knew, which held images and videos of at least 18 other minor girls, including the two other plaintiffs, many from her school. Local police arrested the man in late December 2025; the other two plaintiffs learned from investigators in February 2026 that he had made nude images of them, and he is alleged to have traded the files on Telegram and Mega. The plaintiffs describe anxiety, sleeplessness, nightmares, self-isolation and needing academic accommodations. Their first complaint said law enforcement linked the app he used to xAI's Grok technology; the July amended complaint says the app relied on Stability AI's tools and names Stability AI as a defendant. On 15 October 2026 the court denied an evidence-preservation motion and a motion to stay, and on 22 October it appointed interim co-lead counsel for four related class cases. No court has ruled on the allegations.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Lawsuit Ongoing
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 12 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 18/03/2026
Dec 2024SpainUnidentified image and video tool
In December 2024 a female student in the Ribera Alta area of Valencia province reported to the Guardia Civil that a social-media account had been created in her name featuring an AI-generated video, and later a second account in her name, other accounts showing AI-generated nude videos, and a webpage advertising the images for commercial purposes; the Guardia Civil said the photos, all of minors, had been manipulated so that the people in them appeared completely naked. After 15 other minors came forward with similar complaints, officers traced IP addresses and account emails to the home of a 17-year-old schoolmate, who is being investigated on suspicion of corrupting minors under a Valencia youth court. The Guardia Civil announced the investigation on 27 July 2025.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 09/03/2026
Oct 2025 to Oct 2025IndiaUnidentified image and video tool
A 19-year-old student in Haryana, India, died in October 2025 after being blackmailed with nude images of himself and family members. His father says the images were made with AI from a hacked phone, and police called the case misuse of AI technology. The tool and the suspects remain unidentified in the reporting.
Core concern Critical reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources · Added 09/03/2026