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NOPE · AI and people

AI incidents

Reports of AI-related harm and adverse experiences affecting people’s safety, wellbeing, rights and livelihoods. Explore what happened and the evidence available.

NOPE’s core concern is when AI communicates with a person, acts on their behalf, or depicts or impersonates them. The tracker also records consequential decisions, claims and privacy harms involving AI. Each case needs a described connection between AI use and the harm, including private information recorded into or disclosed to an AI service. Each account is reviewed for publication; claims may remain uncorroborated or disputed. How we review and count cases

In this selection

Published cases
245
Countries with reported events
42
Located 190 of 245 cases · 55 unknown
Languages in checked sources
41
Recorded for 245 of 245 cases

11 cases have no reviewed AI-to-person relation yet: 0 not yet reviewed and 11 reviewed as unknown. Show these cases

These figures describe the cases collected by NOPE. Coverage varies with discovery, reporting and available evidence. They do not estimate how often AI-related harm occurs.

Response counts currently use each case’s principal recorded outcome. Further proceedings may be described in its account.

Cases in this selection, counted once in their first known event year. A series may continue beyond that year. Reporting and collection dates are excluded. NOPE has searched recent events more thoroughly than earlier years, so bar heights also reflect collection effort.

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245 of 1099 published cases · page 2 of 13

Event date unknownUnited StatesUnidentified video tool

Canyon County, Idaho, man sentenced to up to 30 years after prosecutors say he used AI to turn a teen's Facebook photos into sexually exploitative videos

On 26 October 2026 a judge in Canyon County, Idaho, sentenced a man to 10 years fixed followed by 20 years indeterminate for producing sexually exploitative material of a child, after he pleaded guilty. According to the Canyon County Prosecuting Attorney's Office, he took photographs of a teenager he knew from Facebook and used artificial intelligence software to turn them into pornographic videos; KTVB reports that he admitted using AI. Police found the material after a traffic stop in Greenleaf in May 2026. The victim told the court about the toll on their life, saying they felt disgusted looking at themselves because someone else chose to violate them. The tool used is not named.

Core concern High reported severity Involving minors

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 28/10/2026

Oct 2026United StatesUnidentified video tool

North Carolina attack ad used AI-generated video of congressional candidate Jamie Ager dancing with drag performers, fact check says; performers object

In October 2026 a 30-second television attack ad paid for by the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) and approved by Republican state Rep. Jennifer Balkcom, the candidate in North Carolina's 11th congressional district, showed her Democratic opponent Jamie Ager at a barn dance with drag performers. A News & Observer fact check says the ad features videos generated by artificial intelligence and appears to manipulate real footage from one of Ager's own campaign ads, adding a pride flag to the barn wall and filling the barn with drag queens; the ad carries no AI disclaimer, and North Carolina has no AI-disclosure law for political ads. An Asheville drag performer shown in the ad told WLOS that the scene never happened, that she has never met Ager, that her likeness was used without permission and that she sent a cease-and-desist letter; Ager called the ad 100% fake AI-generated lies. Other performers named in the ad also objected. The NRCC said it stands by the ad.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 5 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 28/10/2026

14 Oct 2026BrazilUnidentified image tool

Bahia police say four teenagers extorted a girl with an intimate image made with AI; she paid R$8,300 and police recovered R$6,300

A 12-year-old girl in Vitória da Conquista, in the south-west of Bahia, Brazil, was threatened from 14 October 2026 by a 15-year-old who said he had intimate images of her and demanded money not to post them on social media. Frightened, she secretly took R$8,300 from money her father kept and handed it over; the suspect then demanded a further R$10,000. According to the Bahia Civil Police, its investigation found that the image used in the threats had been produced with artificial intelligence to simulate intimate content of the girl. On 23 October police identified the 15-year-old and three other adolescents aged 14 to 16 as suspects, recovered R$6,300 and an electric bicycle bought with part of the money, and returned the money to her father. The police opened a juvenile offence procedure and sent it to the Childhood and Youth Court. How police established that the image was AI-made is not disclosed.

Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Investigation Opened

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 28/10/2026

Feb 2026 to Oct 2026ChinaUnidentified video tool

Shanghai police say man posted AI-generated videos of his father gravely ill while borrowing over 1.7 million yuan from friends

Shanghai police said on 26 October 2026 that officers in Putuo district had detained a man on suspicion of fraud after police were called on 16 October to a dispute between him and people he owed money to; officers brought him and three creditors, whom police describe as his friends, to the station. According to the police account relayed by ThePaper and China News Service, from 2019 he had borrowed from classmates and friends on a series of false pretexts, later saying his father had cancer and then that his father had died, and the borrowing totalled more than 1.7 million yuan, nearly all lost on the stock market. Police said he confessed that every pretext was invented, and that to make the scam more credible he used AI to generate short videos of his father gravely ill in bed and posted them on his WeChat Moments feed; a Hong Kong relay of the police account words this more cautiously, saying the related photos and videos should be AI-generated, and adds that his father knew nothing of it. The tool used, how many people saw the videos and how much was borrowed after they were posted are not reported. The man is in criminal detention while the investigation continues.

Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 28/10/2026

Apr 2026Event location unknownUnidentified video tool

Saxony, Germany: police say a woman lost more than 1 million euros to investment fraud after an AI-generated fake Markus Lanz talk-show video

Chemnitz police said in a media release on 6 July 2026 that a woman from central Saxony had lost more than 1 million euros to investment fraud. According to the release, in April 2026 she came across what police call an AI-generated video of the ZDF talk show Markus Lanz, in which a supposed financial expert promoted a linked investment platform; after she registered, callers posing as a broker persuaded her over months to transfer sums from almost 10,000 euros to more than 460,000 euros. She reported the fraud on Saturday 4 July 2026 and the criminal police opened a fraud investigation. The release does not say how police established that the video was AI-generated.

Core concern High reported severity Investigation Opened

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 27/10/2026

Oct 2026Event location unknownUnidentified video tool

Rapper IAMDDB says an AI rap video shared by Israel's official accounts used her likeness without consent; its director denies intentionally copying her

Around 15 October 2026 Israel's official social media accounts shared an AI-generated rap video titled 'Jews from Judea (We DID)', in which a braided performer delivered lyrics defending Jewish historical ties to the region. The Manchester-raised rapper IAMDDB, after an activist compared the performer with a 2018 magazine photograph of her in near-identical clothing, asked on X on 16 October why her identity had been used for something she had not consented to, and on 20 October said on Instagram that she had not authorised or taken part in the video, opposed its message, and was taking advice on protecting her image and rights (IBTimes UK, AllHipHop, Happy Mag). According to reporting on his response relayed by IBTimes UK and AllHipHop, the video's director said he had not known who she was, had not intentionally used her image, and could not identify which photographs the generative system might have drawn on. The video was later removed from Israel's accounts without a published explanation. Whether her photograph was used to make the performer is unestablished, and no legal action was reported by 21 October.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources · Added 27/10/2026

Event date unknownEvent location unknownUnidentified video tool

Taiwanese health educator says AI videos copying her face and voice ran in over 100 fake adverts; a fact-checker found one YouTube video AI-generated

A well-known Taiwanese health educator and former hospital toxicology nurse, who appears on television health programmes, told TVBS and PTS in October 2026 that her likeness and voice had for a long time been used without her consent in AI-synthesised videos promoting foods, cookware and cleaning products, most recently a red-date and yam cake sold through Facebook and YouTube adverts. She said she had learned of most of them from viewers or from Taiwan's Ministry of Digital Affairs, which had helped handle dozens of cases; counting her own reports the cases exceeded 100, and some people had still been deceived. She said some viewers who believed she endorsed the products berated her in comments, that the impersonation affected her daily life, and that she felt she had a trauma syndrome. In September 2026 she had told the Liberty Times that since mid-July she had been warning on Facebook about AI-generated videos using her photos and voice. The fact-checking site MyGoPen examined one such item, a 21 September YouTube video presented as her health advice, and found it came from an unofficial channel, that its voice and images were AI-generated, that the video page was labelled as AI-generated content and that the video page had since been suspended by YouTube; her verified Facebook account replied that the channel was a scam. The AI attribution of the product adverts themselves rests on her statements and the outlets' reports.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources · Added 27/10/2026

Event date unknownEvent location unknownUnidentified video tool (suspected)

Pleven, Bulgaria: prosecutors say woman lost 33,000 euros after a probably AI-generated social-media report of a TV host and a politician touting an investment

The Pleven District Prosecutor's Office in Bulgaria announced on 12 June 2026 that it was leading an investigation after a woman living in Pleven province reported an investment fraud. According to the prosecutors, she had been misled by a report broadcast on a social network, probably generated by artificial intelligence, in which a popular television presenter and a political leader promoted, in an interview, an investment programme supposedly introduced in Bulgaria. The release's headline says the report used the voices and faces of the two people. She followed the links in the report, was immediately called on Viber by a person who presented as the company's manager, and, on that person's instructions, transferred a total of 33,000 euros in several transactions of up to 10,000 euros each, after which contact stopped. The prosecutors do not say how they concluded that the report was AI-generated, do not name the people shown and report no suspect.

Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened

AI involvement suspected · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 27/10/2026

Event date unknownEvent location unknownUnidentified video tool

Fact-checkers say videos impersonating an Albanian cardiologist and a journalist to sell hypertension pills were likely AI-made; both men disowned them

A Facebook page in the name of the Albanian cardiologist Dr. Spiro Qirko published a video claiming he had discovered a cure for hypertension, and a second video presented as an interview of him by the journalist Ilir Topi, promoting a product called Hyper Caps. Kallxo's fact-checking unit Krypometer, in an article of 30 March 2026, reports that it ran the video through the AI-content detector Hive Moderation, which gave a 96.4% probability that the video and the speech were AI-generated, and that Hyper Caps is not on the Kosovo medicines agency's list of products authorised for marketing. Both men told Krypometer they had nothing to do with the page or the video. The journalist said it was AI-generated and fake, and the cardiologist said he felt deeply offended by the fraud and had never recommended herbal remedies for hypertension. Who made the videos, how widely they circulated and whether anyone bought the product are not reported.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 27/10/2026

Event date unknownEvent location unknownUnidentified video tool

Hangzhou court orders two men who used AI face-swap videos to defeat a shopping platform's face checks and take users' data to apologise and pay, reports say

Chinese media reports of September and October 2026 describe a civil public-interest suit that the Hangzhou procuratorate brought against two men in the Hangzhou Intermediate People's Court in Zhejiang. According to the court as reported by CCTV News, the two took other people's ID-card photos supplied by an upstream trade in personal data and used an overseas face-swap website to turn them into AI-generated moving videos that nodded, blinked and shook their heads, then fed the videos through a virtual-camera app so that a shopping platform's face liveness check accepted them, letting the men log into other people's accounts. The prosecution said they entered nearly 30 accounts on one shopping platform and took users' delivery addresses and shopping-cart data, which were passed on for sale, and used the same AI technique to verify 20 chat and dating accounts under other people's identities for sale. CCTV also reports a second, non-AI method the men used to enter accounts and does not say how many of the accounts each method reached. After police caught them, the two stopped, returned 5,857 yuan in illegal gains and admitted the conduct, and prosecutors decided not to charge them criminally. In court they admitted abusing AI to infringe other people's personal information and apologised; Chao News reports that they also argued that the face information was generated automatically by AI. The court found that they had abused AI to forge liveness verification and steal and resell user data, and ordered a public apology and public-interest damages equal to their gains. A 26 October report, citing an earlier Chao News report, dates the hearing and first-instance judgment to 4 September 2026.

Core concern Medium reported severity Lawsuit Filed

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources · Added 27/10/2026

Oct 2026Event location unknownUnidentified AI story generator

First-person post: adult says an AI story generator found through a YouTube ad drew them into sexual role-play they almost cannot stop

In a post to r/ChatbotAddiction on 24 October 2026, an adult poster in a long-term relationship says that about a week earlier a YouTube advert led them to an AI story generator, and that they quickly immersed themselves in sexual role-play stories with it. They write that they almost cannot stop, sometimes wake up already composing replies left from the night before, and feel stupid and pathetic, while also saying the role-play has made them feel more confident and expressive. They ask the forum whether they are overinflating it. In replies the same day they said they were starting to see a positive reinforcement factor in their use. The poster does not name the product, and no chats are shown.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 26/10/2026

1 Dec 2025CzechiaUnidentified legal research tool

Czech Constitutional Court fines a lawyer 25,000 crowns over a complaint citing non-existent rulings; the lawyer says a paid legal AI tool drafted it

On 1 December 2025 the presiding judge of a chamber of the Czech Constitutional Court fined a Prague lawyer 25,000 crowns (a quarter of the statutory maximum) for grossly obstructing proceedings. The lawyer had filed a constitutional complaint, for a client refused a temporary residence permit, that argued from 12 decisions of the Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights; the court found that a substantial part of them did not exist and part were grossly misinterpreted. The order says the complaint showed signs of generative AI and that the court presumed the lawyer had generated it with an AI model and then failed to verify the citations. The lawyer confirmed to INFO.CZ that an AI tool was used, described it as a paid professional model from a legal information system provider, said the output was not checked enough, and expressed regret. The court invited the client to correct the complaint so that the client would suffer no procedural harm; the complaint was later rejected as manifestly unfounded on 30 January 2026. INFO.CZ reported on 10 December 2025 that the lawyer had apologised and paid the fine and that the Czech Bar Association's supervisory board was examining the case.

Core + contextual relations Low reported severity Regulatory Action

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 5 sources · Added 26/10/2026

20 Oct 2026Event location unknownUnidentified video tool (suspected)

Texas: researchers say very likely AI deepfake videos impersonating a real former student falsely accused Senate candidate James Talarico of abuse

On 20 October 2026, during early voting in Texas, a newly created X account posted two videos in which a man presented himself as a former student of James Talarico, the Democratic US Senate candidate and a former middle-school teacher, and accused him of sexual assault in 2012. The threat-intelligence firm Graphika said the account very likely impersonated a real Facebook user of the same name who had been Talarico's student and had praised him, assessed the videos as very likely deepfakes because the face moved unnaturally or out of sync with the audio and AI analysis tools indicated AI generation, and attributed them with high confidence to the Russia-aligned influence operation Storm-1516. PolitiFact reported that NewsGuard found many signs of AI generation and a 98 percent detector score, and that the real former student told the fact-checkers Lead Stories the video was not of him and denied accusing Talarico. Talarico's campaign said he was being slandered with AI deepfakes, foreign bots and conspiracy theories. PolitiFact rated the claim Pants on Fire. Who made the videos and how many people saw them is not established.

Core + contextual relations Medium reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement suspected · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources · Added 25/10/2026

May 2025Event location unknownUnidentified video tool

AI-altered video showed Pope Leo XIV giving an address to Burkina Faso's leader that he never gave; Vatican News disowned it and AFP found AI audio

In May 2025, days after his election, a video circulated on YouTube, Facebook and X in which Pope Leo XIV appears to read an English-language address praising Burkina Faso's military leader, Captain Ibrahim Traoré. The Holy See's Vatican News service published an article on 21 May saying the speech had been created with artificial intelligence and falsely attributed to the Pope, and that footage from his 12 May audience with journalists had been morphed so that his lips matched AI-generated words. AFP Fact Check traced the footage to the same press audience, where the Pope spoke in Italian and did not mention Africa or Traoré, and reported that an audio forensic tool gave a 99 percent probability that the audio was AI-generated. CNA reported in September 2025 that the video received at least a million views before YouTube terminated the account that posted it, and that the Vatican's communications office spends much of its time reporting accounts that post AI videos of the Pope. The YouTube channel's description, as AFP reports, called the video a work of fiction.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources · Added 25/10/2026

Oct 2026Event location unknownUnidentified image tool

Met Police chief says online abusers posted an AI-generated image showing an award-winning London constable wearing an explosive vest

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said a Met constable who had just received a Police Federation award for her work on women in policing was subjected to an 'online tirade' of racist, anti-Islam and misogynistic abuse, and that 'at one extreme, somebody did an AI-generated image and put a suicide bomb on her'. He was speaking to BBC Radio 4's PM programme, as reported by the Mirror on 23 October 2026. The Metropolitan Police Federation chair condemned the 'vile racist abuse' and said the Federation was supporting her. The image itself, who made it, the tool used and any investigation are not reported.

Core concern Medium reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 24/10/2026

24 Feb 2024United KingdomUnidentified image tool (suspected)

Families paid for a Glasgow Willy Wonka-themed event advertised with images that appeared AI-generated and found a near-empty warehouse

A Willy Wonka-inspired 'Chocolate Experience' run by House of Illuminati in a Glasgow warehouse on 24 February 2024 promised oversized lollipops and a paradise of sweet treats, promoted with candy-coloured images on its website. Ticket-holders who paid £35 a ticket found a sparsely decorated warehouse; a mother who bought five tickets said it was nothing like what was described, and visitors described young children crying. The event was cancelled that afternoon, police were called as attendees demanded refunds, and the company apologised and promised full refunds. NBC News found the website images could not be traced elsewhere by reverse image search and that some bore hallmarks of AI creation such as nonsensical lettering; other outlets called the adverts AI-generated. The organiser did not confirm AI use to NBC News.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement suspected · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources · Added 24/10/2026

Event date unknownEvent location unknownRevoicer text-to-speech (reported)

British voice actor says an AI clone of his voice, built from an old IBM recording and sold to websites, has cost him jobs

Greg Marston, a British voice actor, said in accounts published in 2023 that an AI-generated clone of his voice, built from a recording he had made for IBM years earlier, was being sold to websites that were using it to build a synthetic voice that could say anything. Julia Angwin's New York Times column (republished by the Oman Observer on 25 September 2023) says he found the clone, called Connor, online and heard his voice on the Wimbledon website during the tennis tournament; Cryptopolitan (1 July 2023) says he found it on Revoicer, an AI text-to-speech site. He had signed a release allowing the recording to be used in many ways, but said he never agreed to having his voice cloned to compete against him. He estimated that the clone had already lost him jobs and was working with a lawyer to seek compensation. IBM said it was aware of his concern and was discussing it with him. The outcome is not reported in the inspected sources.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 24/10/2026

10 Jun 2026United StatesGrok (reported)

Pennsylvania police say a mall worker used Grok to turn a photo he took of a teen girl in a park into child sexual abuse material; charged

Township police in Pennsylvania say a man who worked at a shopping mall photographed a teenage girl in a public park and used the AI app Grok to create child sexual abuse material from the photo, NBC10 Philadelphia reported on 23 October 2026. Officials cited by NBC10 say his devices held hundreds of AI-generated child sexual abuse videos and photos, other child sexual abuse material and more than 150 covert upskirt videos of women and teenage girls. The criminal complaint, as reported by the Delaware County Daily Times on 27 October, says the park photos were taken on 8 June 2026, that a matching AI video was created on 10 June, that records police obtained from Grok by warrant held the account's text prompts, and that investigators found 76 AI-generated videos and 53 AI images, fewer than the hundreds of files NBC10 relayed. The investigation began in June 2026 after a woman reported seeing such material on his phone; he was arrested on 21 October, posted bail and faces a preliminary hearing on 30 October. The charges are unproven.

Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 24/10/2026

Event date unknownUnited StatesUnidentified image tool

Florida sheriff says a prison inmate used AI on a contraband phone to make thousands of sexual images of the child victim of his original case

The Martin County Sheriff's Office in Florida said on 22 October 2026 that a man serving a 25-year sentence for child sexual abuse offences used a contraband phone in his cell at Martin Correctional Institution to communicate with a child through social media and to create, with artificial intelligence, thousands of sexually explicit images depicting the victim of his original case. Detectives had received an Internet Crimes Against Children tip the previous month about a phone downloading large amounts of child sexual abuse material; prison staff recovered the phone. Sheriff John Budensiek said the man was 'continuing, essentially, to revictimize our victim' from prison, that the victim had been notified, and that investigators do not believe the AI images of the original victim were among the images he traded with others. The sheriff also said he sent an AI-generated nude image of a man to young girls on Snapchat, none of whom appeared to engage. He is expected to face additional charges (CBS12). The allegations are unproven.

Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 24/10/2026

Event date unknownUnited StatesUnidentified image tool

New Jersey prosecutor says man posted AI-generated deepfake nude images of two adults with their real names and photos; charged

The Bergen County Prosecutor's Office in New Jersey announced on 22 October 2026 the arrest of a man on charges of creating and distributing deceptive visual media, invasion of privacy, cyber-harassment and harassment. According to authorities, as reported by NJ.com, social-media posts showed two adult victims' real names and photographs alongside AI-generated deepfake nude images, and investigators identified him as the person behind the accounts. The investigation began in May 2026. The charges are unproven.

Core concern Medium reported severity Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 24/10/2026

Cases may have several effects and sources. Mixed accounts qualify when they include a reported harm or adverse experience. People are counted within individual cases where sources support a number; we do not publish a collection-wide total of distinct people.

A source’s existence, the experience it reports and AI’s causal role are separate questions. A lawsuit records allegations unless a subsequent finding establishes them.

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Last dataset update: 04/11/2026. Dataset available under CC BY 4.0.