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
Event date unknownEvent location unknownCharacter.AI (reported)
In three public posts to r/antiai, on 11 June, 6 July and 15 October 2026, a person who calls themselves a recovering chatbot addict writes that they were addicted to Character.AI for years and tried to quit on and off without success. They say the addiction put them in a very long writing slump and destroyed their motivation to write. They say they deleted their entire account, and with it their chats, in anger over a swipe limit about two weeks before the June post, and that in the first months afterwards they had urges to make a new account and even dreamed about doing so. Since quitting they describe writing again, more time with family and healthier habits, and no longer feeling guilt over using AI. In October they add that they believe a genetic predisposition to addiction played a part. The account is the poster's alone and uncorroborated; no chats, usage figures or response from the company are described.
Core concern Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 16/10/2026
5 Feb 2026 to 9 Oct 2026United StatesvLex, Paxton AI and NotebookLM (reported)
In a federal trademark suit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, the court on 5 February 2026 struck a company defendant's motion papers and entered default judgment against it as a sanction on its lawyer, after his filings repeatedly cited nonexistent cases and misattributed quotations. The lawyer said he had found and cite-checked cases with AI tools (vLex and Paxton AI) and used NotebookLM to review a later submission; the court rejected his explanations and found he acted in bad faith. On 9 October 2026 the court described the citations as produced by generative AI and ordered the lawyer to pay $38,877.59 in fees and costs to the firm of a co-defendant's former lawyer, who had reported the false citations to the court.
Core + contextual relations Medium reported severity
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 16/10/2026
2025United StatesGoogle AI Overviews (reported)
In August 2025 Stefanina's, a family-owned pizzeria in Wentzville, Missouri, posted on Facebook asking customers not to use Google AI to find its specials. The restaurant said Google AI was telling people about specials that do not exist, that this was causing angry customers to yell at its employees, and that it would not honour the Google AI specials. Staff told KMOV and FOX 2 that the AI Overview at the top of Google Search had shown deals such as a large pizza for the price of a small one and a second pizza for $4. A manager described a customer who came in asking for a special the manager had never heard of, found in the AI-generated first search response, and said customers kept asking why the specials were not honoured. Google did not respond to either station. The account comes from the restaurant; no AI Overview text or customer account was published.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 16/10/2026
Jun 2026 to Sept 2026GermanyUnidentified image tool (suspected)
The Gauting police inspection in Bavaria, Germany, reported on 2 October 2026 that a man had filed a complaint after realising he had been the victim of investment fraud. According to the police report, he said he had clicked on an advertising banner for an investment on the website of a large German news magazine, and the police say he was presumably lured by the combination of an AI-generated image of a well-known television presenter with a supposedly lucrative investment strategy. After he entered his email address and phone number on the trading platform, four women callers contacted him from 4 June 2026 until September and led him to make four payments totalling more than 25,000 euros to accounts in Bulgaria, Malta and Lithuania. His bank could not reverse the transfers because he had authorised them himself. The police do not say how they concluded that the image was AI-generated, and the presenter is not named in the police report.
Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement suspected · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 16/10/2026
13 Oct 2026BangladeshUnidentified video tool
On 13 October 2026 two videos depicting two Bangladeshi actresses in sexual content were posted on the official Instagram account of the private television channel Maasranga Television. The fact-checking organisation Rumor Scanner reported, as relayed by Prothom Alo and Dhaka Files, that the videos were not genuine and had been made by placing the actresses' faces onto other videos with face-swap technology; Dhaka Files adds that the source videos came from adult websites and describes the technology as AI. The channel said its account had been hacked and that fake images and videos made by misusing AI had been published; it announced that it had recovered the account with the help of BTRC, the CID and Banani police station, removed the videos, expressed regret and said it would take legal action. Dhaka Files reports the videos were viewed roughly 400,000 times before deletion and records doubts about the hack claim, because routine posts continued from the account during the period. On 15 October one of the actresses wrote on her Facebook page that creating and spreading fabricated content in someone's name with AI is a crime. Who made or posted the videos is not established in the sources.
Core concern Medium reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources · Added 16/10/2026
May 2025Event location unknownUnidentified video tool
In June 2025 the Stockholm police region warned that since the end of May it had received several complaints from people defrauded through social media adverts with AI-generated videos depicting doctors, who appeared to give advice and recommend medicines or vitamins. According to the police, viewers who followed the adverts to fraudulent websites were induced to enter card details, after which a considerably larger sum was charged and the details were stolen. Dagens Nyheter reported that the doctors used included the former state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell and the professor Agnes Wold, who told the paper of being furious. In July 2025 the Public Health Agency of Sweden said fake Facebook films imitating its former state epidemiologist were advertising products for diabetes or asthma, that it had reported them to the police and had asked Meta to remove them; he said it was sad that fraudsters were exploiting vulnerable people. Dagens Nyheter, as relayed by Omni, reported that the investigations were closed because the offences were judged to have been committed abroad. The number of defrauded people and their losses are not stated, and the police do not say how the AI generation was established.
Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 6 sources, 4 underlying accounts · Added 16/10/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownYuanbao
A user posted screenshots and a screen recording on RedNote, surfacing on Friday 2 January 2026, showing that Tencent's Yuanbao assistant insulted them while they were asking it to fix and tidy code. Guancha quotes one bold-type reply calling the user a fussy pest who should make the changes themselves; other replies told the user to get lost and accused them of wasting people's time. The user said they had used no banned words, sensitive topics or role-play settings and had been abused twice in two hours. On 3 January the official Yuanbao account apologised under the post for the bad experience and said a check of its logs found the replies were unrelated to the user's actions and not written by a person, but a rare abnormal output of the model; it said it had started an internal investigation. The original post was later deleted.
Core concern Low reported severity Internal Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources · Added 16/10/2026
Apr 2026 to Jun 2026HondurasUnidentified image tool
Honduras's National Police announced on 14 October 2026 that its anti-kidnapping unit (UNAS) of the Police Investigations Directorate (DPI) had arrested a woman, under a court warrant, on suspicion of simulating a non-existent offence related to kidnapping and of using false documents. According to the police statement, the investigation found that she had faked her own kidnapping twice, in episodes reported on 21 April and 1 June 2026, to obtain money from her partner to pay personal debts, and that she received an initial deposit of 2,000 lempiras after making the partner believe she was being held and that her captors were demanding money. Police say the agents determined that she presumably used artificial-intelligence tools to generate false images of injuries and bruises, which were sent to the partner to make the partner believe she had been beaten by the supposed kidnappers, together with apparently forged hospital documents. According to the investigation file, she said after being located that she planned both episodes and used AI to make the images. She was brought before the issuing court; no court finding is reported.
Core concern Low reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 16/10/2026
Event date unknownUnited KingdomUnidentified image tool
A former supply teacher who worked at secondary schools in Greater Manchester was jailed for six years at Bolton Crown Court on 15 October 2026 after pleading guilty to 21 offences, including publishing obscene material and taking indecent photographs of children. The Crown Prosecution Service says he used his position to find pupils' details, located their social media profiles and used AI to create sexualised images from their own photos, which he shared on social media; the BBC reports some were posted on X. Parents reported two accounts to police in March 2025. The court heard that one girl whose photograph had been used was left embarrassed. His offending also included more than 100 covert upskirt photographs taken in schools. The AI tool is not named.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources · Added 16/10/2026
Sept 2025Event location unknownRevolut chatbot
In September 2025 a Revolut customer asked its chatbot to refund loyalty points. According to Financial Ombudsman Service decision DRN-6062372, he was initially offered £22.38 for 1,119 points. Four days later the chatbot said those points were worth £1,119 and confirmed it had processed that refund. After the chatbot retracted this, a live agent said the £1,119 refund was being processed. The next day the chatbot said it had issued £22.38.
The customer described financial pressure and distress, said he had disclosed ADHD to Revolut, and supplied a GP letter describing symptoms including anxiety and insomnia. The ombudsman discussed the bank's responsibility to accommodate vulnerable customers, but also thought the customer probably knew the higher figure was wrong and said Revolut corrected matters quickly. It nevertheless found that repeated misinformation had raised his expectations and directed another £50 compensation, bringing the award to £100. He was never entitled to the £1,119. Acceptance of the decision, payment of the additional £50 and any changes to the chatbot or support process are unconfirmed.
Core concern Low reported severity
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 15/10/2026
2026Event location unknownUnidentified customer-service chatbot
Xinmin Evening News reported on 13 October 2026, in a piece on consumer complaints over the October 2026 National Day holiday, a shopper who paid 12,099 yuan for a branded mobile phone on an unnamed platform; the merchant did not ship it at the agreed time. According to the report, he contacted customer service many times but got only the AI's automatic replies, the same few sentences over and over, and could never get transferred to a human. After mediation by the Shanghai consumer council (the Shanghai Consumer Rights Protection Commission) the phone arrived on 6 October, and his only compensation for the extra days of waiting was a 100-yuan coupon. The council's holiday figures, relayed by Laodong Bao, list looping AI customer-service replies and difficulty reaching a human among the concentrated problems. The platform, merchant and chat record are not reported.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 15/10/2026
31 Jan 2025 to 12 Dec 2025United StatesUnidentified AI drafting tool
On 12 December 2025 the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon dismissed with prejudice the claims of plaintiffs in a family dispute over their late mother's estate and family property, as a sanction for what the court called their misuse of generative artificial intelligence, and found their continual violations of the court's Local Rules an additional basis for the dismissal. Three of the plaintiffs' summary-judgment briefs cited fifteen nonexistent cases and fabricated quotations attributed to eight real authorities. The plaintiffs had said the inaccurate citations came from reliance on an automated legal citation tool. The court found that the plaintiffs shared responsibility with their lead lawyer and that one plaintiff, a frequent self-represented litigant, was likely the person who used AI to draft the briefs. It struck the briefs, ordered the lead lawyer to pay $15,500 to the court and awarded the defendants their fees. In March 2026 it set those fees at $94,704.38, ordering the lead lawyer to pay 85% and local counsel 15%. In June 2026 it denied the plaintiffs' motion to reconsider a later ruling for the defendants on a counterclaim.
Core + contextual relations Medium reported severity Lawsuit Dismissed
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 15/10/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownChatGPT
In a report published by LBC on 8 September 2025, a mother who asked to remain anonymous said her son, who has manic psychotic episodes, uses ChatGPT daily, sees it as a reliable companion that can do no wrong, and turns to it when the episodes peak to ask for advice about his grandiose ideas. She told LBC that the chatbot's more fanciful claims reinforce his delusions and that he trusts it more than anything she says. She said this has left her feeling anxious and defeated. The account is hers alone. LBC did not identify the son, and no chat logs, clinical records or statement from the son were inspected. The article includes a general statement from an OpenAI spokesperson about how ChatGPT responds in sensitive moments.
Core concern Medium reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 15/10/2026
2026UkraineUnidentified voice-changing tool
Ukrainian prosecutors, the SBU security service and the National Police announced on 14 October 2026 that they had shut down a fraudulent call centre in the Lviv region of Ukraine. According to the Lviv regional prosecutor's office and the Office of the Prosecutor General, the group created fake women's accounts on dating services and messengers and, to make the conversations more convincing, used software with a neural network that changed a male voice to a female one in real time. Victims were persuaded to download a file disguised as a photograph that contained remote-access malware and to share their screens; the group then took control of their banking apps and moved the money to accounts it controlled or into cryptocurrency. Prosecutors say that, on preliminary data, at least 50 Ukrainian citizens and 30 foreigners, including people in Poland, Germany and Georgia, were victims. Three men were notified of suspicion, including under a new criminal-code article on fraudulent call centres in force since September 2026, and were remanded in custody with the option of bail. The statements do not say how many victims heard the altered voice or how much each lost.
Core concern Medium reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 15/10/2026
7 May 2025 to 23 Jul 2025Event location unknownChatGPT
In an incarcerated man's lawsuit against Alabama prison officials in the US District Court for the Northern District of Alabama, two motions filed in May 2025 for the defence of a former Alabama corrections commissioner contained five citations that did not exist or did not support the propositions cited. Lawyers of the Butler Snow firm, which the state retains to defend its prisons, told the court that a partner had obtained the citations from ChatGPT and had not verified them. On 23 July 2025 Judge Anna M. Manasco publicly reprimanded three of the firm's lawyers, disqualified them from the case and referred the matter to the Alabama State Bar, and ordered them to give the order to clients, opposing counsel and judges in all their pending cases. She declined to suspend them and released the firm and two other lawyers without sanction.
Core concern Medium reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 15/10/2026
Event date unknownUnited StatesUnidentified image tool
The Parker County Sheriff's Office in Texas says a juvenile confessed to taking photographs of a younger child and using AI to alter them so that the child appeared nude, and that evidence from the teenager's devices and TikTok account showed photos of at least three other juvenile victims were transformed the same way and uploaded to TikTok. The case began with a July tip from TikTok to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The sheriff's office says all victims were identified and their families notified. The teenager faces felony charges, including possession of child pornography, and awaits juvenile court proceedings; the account is the sheriff's office's, relayed by CBS Texas and FOX 4 on 14 October 2026, and the charges are untried.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 15/10/2026
Jun 2025Event location unknownUnidentified image tool
A Bucks County, Pennsylvania, judge sentenced a man to state prison on 14 October 2026 after he pleaded guilty to child sexual abuse material and theft charges. According to court documents and prosecutors, detectives who began investigating him in June 2025 found AI-generated deepfake nude images of a teenage girl he knew, a neighbor, on his devices; her face had been placed on other bodies. The day after the arrest he was recorded entering her family's home and stealing her underwear. Her father described the family's distress in court, and the Inquirer reports that she is struggling at school, taking antidepressants and in therapy. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports a sentence of seven to 10 years. The Bucks County Courier Times gave seven to 12 years in its first report and seven to 20 years after republishing it to update the sentence length. Neither report names the AI tool.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 15/10/2026
2026Event location unknownChatGPT (reported)
VnExpress reported on 15 October 2026 that early in the year, just after receiving a Tet bonus, an investor asked ChatGPT which three stocks to buy now with 200 million dong and after several exchanges about needs and risk appetite received three stocks in the banking, information-technology and securities groups. ChatGPT suggested splitting the purchases, waiting for dips and setting take-profit and stop-loss levels, and each answer said it was not an investment offer with committed profit, which VnExpress says the investor disregarded, buying all three at once. All three were in profit more than a month later, and the investor then treated ChatGPT as a professional broker and kept asking it for tips. In recent months the recommended blue-chip stocks fell continuously; the portfolio is in the red, with one stock down 48%, and the investor told VnExpress that for weeks they had stopped checking it. The article presents the account alongside warnings from securities-company staff about relying on general-purpose chatbots for trading decisions.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 15/10/2026