Jun 2025Event location unknownChatGPT (reported)
In a Substack post published on 7 October 2026, a writer using a pseudonym says they started using ChatGPT around 1 June 2025 and that within about a week they were not sleeping, losing weight, frightened and questioning reality. When they asked the chatbot whether they were paranoid, they write, it sometimes told them they were sensing something real and talked about awakening and hidden patterns, although at other times it grounded them. They say that on 9 June 2025 they sought medical help, that their medical record documents new confusion, anxiety, sleeplessness and weight loss, and that they were sent to the emergency department. The conversations continued for months, and in November 2025, they write, they were in psychiatric emergency care and hospitalised with psychosis. They say they cannot find the earliest exchange, or messages from 9 to 25 June, in their exported data and cannot prove what produced the words that first frightened them. They describe themselves as grounded now. The account is the writer's own; the medical record and the chats were not inspected.
Core concern High reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 16/10/2026
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
31 Oct 2025SpainUnidentified AI design tool
A company that designs and manufactures industrial furnaces dismissed a mechanical draughtsman on 31 October 2025 for objective reasons, citing a fall in business and the introduction of new technologies in its engineering department, including a model-based-definition design method and artificial-intelligence tools. According to press reports of the judgment, the dismissal letter put the cost of the tool licences at 4,725 euros a year against his gross annual salary of 29,871 euros and argued that the saving exceeded 80%. The social section of the Tribunal de Instancia de Bilbao declared the dismissal unfair, finding that the company had proved neither its economic losses nor the real implementation of the tools: an employee trained on the new method testified that she had never worked with it, and an implementation report was dated June 2026, seven months after the dismissal. The company must choose between reinstating the worker and paying 12,330.56 euros in compensation, less the amount already paid; the court rejected his claims that the dismissal was void and for a higher job category. One outlet reports that four draughtsmen were dismissed in total. El Periódico, which reported the same judgment in August 2026, dates it to early June 2026 and quotes the dismissal letter's statement that the company had introduced new artificial-intelligence systems that automate technical tasks previously done by specialised staff. The judgment was not read, and whether it is final is not reported.
AI relation unknown Medium reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources, 1 underlying account · 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
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
Apr 2024GermanyUnidentified website and voice tool
A man tried before the lay-assessor court in Detmold, Germany, confessed to taking 19,190 euros between April 2024 and September 2025 from 32 buyers who paid for box-spring beds, kitchens and cars listed on eBay or TikTok that never existed, the Lippische Landes-Zeitung reported on 4 August 2026. He told the court that AI had helped him build the fake shop websites he used to make the offers look credible and that he had generated a female voice with AI for a telephone call with a customer. The court convicted him of fraud in 32 cases and sentenced him to two and a half years in prison; his appeal is pending. On 13 October 2026 the court acquitted his former partner, in whose name several of the accounts had been opened.
Core concern Medium reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 14/10/2026
1 Jul 2026Event location unknownIndie Campers chatbot (reported)
In a Reddit post on 4 July 2026 a renter wrote that on 1 July they booked a camper van from Indie Campers for a trip on 12 to 18 July and, before paying, asked the AI chatbot on the company's official website whether they could travel to Montenegro. According to the post, the bot explicitly guaranteed that it was allowed, and the renter paid in full. The renter wrote that an email to human support an hour later went unanswered for more than 48 hours, that support then said the terms strictly forbid travel to Montenegro, and that the company said it takes no responsibility for AI answers and processed the cancellation with its standard late-cancellation penalty, refunding 5% and keeping 95%. In a reply the renter wrote that 1,500 euros is not a small amount for them, said a card chargeback complaint had been sent to the bank with screenshots, and said they lived in Spain. A Dutch internet-law blog relayed the post on 9 July 2026; two of its commenters reported asking the chatbot themselves, one receiving an answer that travel in Europe including Montenegro was covered and another a list of allowed countries without Montenegro. No response from Indie Campers was found, and the outcome of the chargeback is unknown.
Core concern Medium reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources · Added 13/10/2026
1 Sept 2026Event location unknownUnidentified AI drafting tool
In a pending appeal against a decision of Austria's data protection authority, the Federal Administrative Court (BVwG) found that the appellant had filed hundreds of pages of statements and attachments within less than four months that were obviously created exclusively with large-language-model text programs and not labelled as AI-generated. In a decision of 1 September 2026 the court imposed a EUR 200 penalty for wanton use of the court, holding that the AI-assisted filings repeated the same complaints, brought no new facts or evidence and ignored the EU labelling duty for AI-generated content. The court announced it as the first such penalty for AI submissions. The appellant is anonymised and the appellant's response is not reported.
Core concern Low reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 13/10/2026
1 Jan 2026BrazilGrok
A musician in Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil, says she posted a photo of herself in bed with her cat on X just before midnight on New Year's Eve 2025, and the next morning found that anonymous users had asked X's built-in chatbot Grok to edit it. According to her accounts to G1, Correio Braziliense, Extra and Reuters, Grok produced versions showing her in a micro-bikini, in lingerie and fully nude, and more requests followed when she protested. She described feeling violated and afraid that colleagues or relatives would see the images, and filed a police report in Rio de Janeiro on 2 January 2026 for unauthorised recording of sexual intimacy. She says X removed one requesting account but told her it found no rule violation in her case. BBC News Brasil returned to the case in October 2026.
Core concern Medium reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 5 sources, 4 underlying accounts · Added 13/10/2026
23 Sept 2025 to 23 Oct 2025NetherlandsChatGPT (reported)
The municipality of Eindhoven in the Netherlands told its council in an information letter shared on Thursday 18 December 2025 that a sample of staff data traffic from 23 September to 23 October 2025 showed files containing personal data of residents and employees had been sent to public AI websites such as ChatGPT, according to Omroep Brabant and Binnenlands Bestuur. The files included youth-care (Jeugdwet) documents, internal reports and CVs, mostly from departments that provide care and support to residents. According to Omroep Brabant's account of findings by the advisory firm Hooghiemstra & Partners, the youth-care documents held information about the mental and physical health of minor children, and social-support (WMO) documents and applicants' CVs were also entered. The municipality reported the breach to the Dutch Data Protection Authority on 23 October, blocked public AI websites and asked OpenAI to delete the files. The council says the scale cannot be determined because the data was kept for only 30 days, so it cannot inform those affected, and that the risk of misuse is limited but cannot be ruled out. A spokesperson said OpenAI had not yet replied.
Contextual tracker case High reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 12/10/2026
28 Jun 2025EgyptDeepSeek
Clinicians at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf report in EULAR Rheumatology Open (published 29 September 2026) a man in his thirties with nearly three decades of unexplained febrile attacks who, in a dialogue with DeepSeek begun on 28 June 2025, saw the model's differential narrow to familial Mediterranean fever (FMF). The authors write that the model repeatedly recommended specialist assessment but also discussed a diagnostic trial of colchicine with specific dosing. Motivated by the hypothesis, he arranged commercial genetic testing and obtained colchicine from a pharmacy in Egypt, starting it without specialist supervision. His attacks stopped, but his alanine aminotransferase rose to 160 U/L and colchicine was paused and later resumed at a lower dose. FMF was confirmed when he presented to the clinic in February 2026. The authors write that the case illustrates how patient-facing models may facilitate recognition of rare autoinflammatory diseases, and that confident diagnostic language combined with actionable treatment advice may also encourage unsupervised testing and self-medication.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 12/10/2026
Jan 2025ItalyUnidentified customer-service AI tool
In January 2025 Maersk Italia, the Genoa-based Italian arm of the Danish logistics group, dismissed four employees of its Customer Service department without warning, according to the regional transport unions Filt Cgil, Fit Cisl and Uiltrasporti, who called a one-day strike. The unions said the company had moved the work to Manila and had also replaced part of the tasks done by the Genoa staff with artificial intelligence. One of the four, a woman, sued, while the other three accepted a severance offer. Euronews reported on 30 April 2026 that the Genoa labour court had ordered her reinstatement with compensation for the months she went unpaid, finding the dismissal unlawful because the employer had not tried to redeploy her within the company. A legal commentary in Domani gives the judgment's date as 30 March 2026, while Euronews says the decision came on Thursday, the eve of 1 May. The unions that backed the case described it as the first Italian case in which judges ruled on a dismissal linked to AI, although the Domani commentary also cites a Rome ruling of November 2025 on an AI-related dismissal. The Domani commentary does not name the employer. No source describes the AI system or what it did, and Maersk's account of the dismissals was not found.
AI relation unknown Medium reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources · Added 11/10/2026
2025FranceChatGPT (reported)
Plus que pro, a company founded in 2014 in Schiltigheim near Strasbourg that recruits franchised sales agents, is accused by three former employees interviewed by AFP of building a recruitment tool that screened candidates on unlawful criteria with the help of AI. According to one of them, in spring 2025 the company collected about 740,000 sales CVs from job platforms such as Hellowork and reduced them to 130,000 in five days with ChatGPT after applying discriminatory filters. AFP says it consulted the prompt, which told the AI to estimate each candidate's age, keep those under 55, infer age from the baccalaureate year and exclude those under 27, and require that the candidate's surname not be of African origin, and a results table listing a rejection reason against each name, such as "too young" or "too old", with women identified by first name marked "Exception". A former employee said that all the sales agents retained had the same profile, white and in their forties; another said the AI only systematised a practice already established when CVs were sorted by hand. One former employee says he has referred the matter to the CNIL and the Défenseur des droits; the CNIL said it could not comment on an individual case. The company denies ever asking anyone to build discriminatory criteria into its tools; it acknowledges that one version of the tool contained developments contrary to its specifications, but says that version was never put into service, evaluated no candidate and was developed by a former employee acting on their own initiative, who has since been dismissed. Rue89 Strasbourg separately reported, from working documents and testimony, that the company sorted thousands of CVs on criteria of gender and supposed origin without the candidates' knowledge between 2023 and 2026; its subscriber-only report could be read only in part.
Contextual tracker case Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution disputed · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 11/10/2026
Event date unknownSpainUnidentified voice-cloning tool
The Guardia Civil in La Rioja said on 25 August 2026 that it had solved a 'relative in trouble' fraud in which the criminals used artificial intelligence to clone the voice of the victim's daughter. According to the force's account as reported by the newspaper La Rioja and Radio Arnedo, the victim received WhatsApp messages from an unknown number by someone posing as the daughter and asking for urgent money; when the victim called that number to check, a voice that sounded like the daughter answered, and the victim transferred 9,980.25 euros. Investigators of the Guardia Civil's technology team established that the voice had been generated with AI tools. Urgent coordination with the banks froze the funds in the destination account and the full amount was returned to the victim; Radio Arnedo and ActualidadRiojaBaja report that the presumed perpetrator was identified and investigated.
Core concern Low reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 11/10/2026
Sept 2025 to Jan 2026AustraliaUnidentified AI writing tool
An AI-generated article on the Tasmania Tours booking website described "Weldborough Hot Springs", a "secluded forest retreat" with pools "rich in therapeutic minerals", as one of the best hot-spring experiences in Tasmania. No such springs exist: the Weld River that runs through Weldborough, a small town in north-east Tasmania, is cold. ABC News reported on 22 January 2026 that travellers who read the article had been turning up at the town's pub, the Weldborough Hotel, to ask for directions, and the publican said she was receiving daily calls and visits and that a group of 24 drivers on a trip from the mainland had taken a detour two days earlier to find the springs. ABC News reported that the article was posted in July 2025, and The Independent, citing ABC News and CNN, reported that inquiries began with a few calls in September 2025. The operator, Australian Tours and Cruises, said its outsourced AI content had "completely messed up", that some posts had gone live by mistake, and that all AI-generated blog posts had been taken down. The reports describe the travellers only as a group; no individual traveller is interviewed, and the AI tool is not named. In The Independent's paraphrase, the publican also said the post brought "a bit of a tourism boon" for Weldborough.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 10/10/2026
Event date unknownUnited Kingdom, GeorgiaUnidentified video tool
A man in his 30s from East Anglia, England, told the Guardian (pseudonym used) that he watched a video of broadcaster Ben Fogle apparently promoting cryptocurrency trading on a site called AdmiralsFX, entered his details, was called by what turned out to be a Tbilisi call centre, paid a £250 buy-in and within a month had handed over £27,000, about a year's salary. The Guardian describes the clip as a deepfake, a digitally doctored video Fogle had publicly warned about in spring 2024. The account was published in March 2025 as part of a Guardian, SVT and OCCRP investigation of a leak from the Georgian operation, which the Guardian says duped at least 6,179 people and whose victims frequently cited the deepfake ads as the reason they went ahead.
Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 09/10/2026
Aug 2026ChinaUnidentified symptom-analysis tool
A Guangming Daily feature on AI symptom-checking, republished by Bingtuan Daily on Sina Finance on 8 October 2026, recounts a case from August 2026 in Zhejiang and closes it with a quotation from the head of paediatrics at a provincial hospital, who says the family did not heed the doctor's advice. A three-year-old boy with a history of asthma was brought in; his mother had entered keywords such as allergy, asthma, cough and night-time wheezing into an AI tool, which quickly returned a diagnosis of an acute bronchial asthma attack. On that basis, the account says, she declined the chest X-ray the doctor recommended and insisted on taking home only nebuliser medication. Two days later the child's condition worsened with rapid breathing; on an overnight return to the hospital, examination found extensive inflammatory lesions in both lungs, and he was diagnosed with human metapneumovirus pneumonia with a superimposed bacterial infection and admitted as an emergency. The paediatrics head is quoted saying the illness would not have become so severe had the family listened earlier. The AI tool is not named. The case is told in the newspaper's voice, and the feature does not say where its account came from beyond the paediatrics head's quotation; no statement from the family is reported.
Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Involving minors
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 09/10/2026
Event date unknownUnited KingdomChatGPT (suspected)
In a public post to r/LegalAdviceUK created on 7 October 2026, a person who says she worked in social media for a brand in England, creating content for its organic and paid media, writes that about four months after leaving she came across a social media ad using an image of her that had been made with AI. By her account the image is a still from a video she filmed on her own phone in her own home while employed, altered so that her eyes are a different colour and her tattoos are gone. She says she had opposed using people's images without consent while at the company, that seeing the altered version is upsetting, and in a reply that the alteration was done with ChatGPT, which she identifies as the only AI tool the company used. The employer is not named and did not respond in the thread. The account is the poster's alone and uncorroborated.
Core concern Low reported severity
AI involvement suspected · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 08/10/2026
4 Nov 2025JapanUnidentified mushroom-identification tool
According to Wakayama city’s public-health division, as reported by MBS (Mainichi Broadcasting) on 21 November 2025 and relayed by HuffPost Japan on 9 September 2026, a man in his 70s living in Wakayama city gathered wild mushrooms resembling hiratake (oyster mushroom) and shiitake in the mountains of Shimokitayama village, Nara prefecture, on 3 November 2025. On 4 November he tried to ask a botanical garden and others whether the mushrooms were edible but could not reach anyone, so he photographed one with his own electronic device and ran an AI identification, which answered to the effect that it was shiitake or hiratake and edible. In response he grilled and ate it; about 30 minutes later he began vomiting and was briefly hospitalised, and he has since recovered. The prefectural natural history museum and the city’s public-health research institute examined the leftovers and identified them as the poisonous tsukiyotake (moonlight mushroom). The city warned that judging wild mushrooms by AI or by picture books alone is dangerous. HuffPost Japan reports that Japan’s agriculture ministry issued a warning on 4 September 2026 against deciding edibility from search results or AI answers. The AI tool is not identified in the reports and the man’s exact exchange with it is not reproduced.
Core concern Medium reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 08/10/2026
Jun 2025FranceUnidentified image and video tool
A retired woman in her eighties living in Pont-à-Mousson (Meurthe-et-Moselle, France) responded, in summer 2025 according to Le Parisien and Capital, to an online advertisement in which AI-generated likenesses of Emmanuel Macron and Bernard Arnault promoted a lucrative investment platform. A supposed financial adviser then called her, she invested 5,000 euros, received several hundred euros of 'interest', and reinvested repeatedly until the advertisement and the site disappeared. L'Est Républicain (7 June 2026) and Capital put the loss at 10,000 euros; Le Parisien, citing ICI and L'Est Républicain, reports 25,000 euros, all her savings. The Pont-à-Mousson police station says an investigation was opened and that it receives three to five complaints a week for this kind of fraud. The account rests on the police station's warning as reported by the regional press, which describes the advertisement as AI-generated; the advertisement itself was not examined by the outlets and the quoted police statements do not mention AI.
Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 07/10/2026