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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 is wider: it also records consequential decisions and claims about people. Each account is reviewed for publication; claims may remain uncorroborated or disputed. How we review and count cases

In this selection

Published cases
99
Countries with reported events
23
Located 75 of 99 cases · 24 unknown
Languages in checked sources
20
Recorded for 99 of 99 cases

27 cases have no reviewed AI-to-person relation yet: 18 not yet reviewed and 9 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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99 of 404 published cases · page 2 of 5

25 Feb 2025 to 23 Apr 2025IndiaUnidentified video tool

Bengaluru woman reportedly lost Rs 3.75 crore after a Sadhguru deepfake investment pitch

Bengaluru police said a retired woman lost about Rs 3.75 crore after encountering a purported AI-generated video of Sadhguru promoting investments. The Indian Express reports that the contact and transfers took place from 25 February to 23 April 2025. According to the reported FIR, the video led to a trading platform and subsequent contact with scammers, who showed apparent profits. The woman realised the problem when withdrawal attempts prompted further payment demands. Police were attempting to freeze accounts, while warning recovery would be difficult.

Core concern High reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 30/09/2026

Event date unknownUnited StatesUnidentified image and video tool

Maine school district reports teacher targeted by fabricated AI videos and photos

A Maine school superintendent told families that a teacher had been targeted by a malicious digital attack using AI-created videos and photos. The letter, reproduced by WABI, said the content falsely portrayed the teacher and had circulated online, with a small number of students possibly accessing or sharing it. The district said the hosting account had been reported and the video taken down, and offered support to the teacher. The first creation date and specific content are unknown.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 30/09/2026

Event date unknownUnited StatesUnidentified image tool

Students at a US high school reportedly depicted in AI-generated sexual images shared between students

On 2 and 3 April 2026 outlets reported a district letter to families and a police statement about a report that reached high school administrators on 26 February 2026. The report concerned the possible use of AI to generate sexual images that included the likenesses of other students. Police were contacted the same day and described potential transmission between students of lewd material, including AI-generated content depicting the likenesses of juveniles. Families of students thought to be involved, including students whose images were included, were contacted on 26 and 27 February, and the school issued school-based consequences between 26 February and 6 March. The police investigation was active and no charge was reported. One parent told a local outlet that police had obtained a subpoena for Snapchat records, and another said the victims number more than 40 and range from high school to fifth grade. The district and police gave no count, and the creation date, the AI tool and the outcome are not reported.

Core concern Medium reported severity Involving minors

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 6 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 30/09/2026

Event date unknownUnited StatesUnidentified image and video tool

Livingston Parish, Louisiana: sheriff's office says a woman first treated as a victim made the AI-generated nude photos and videos, rape threats and extortion attempts in an online threats case

On 24 July 2026 WBRZ, WAFB and the Livingston Parish News relayed a Livingston Parish Sheriff's Office (Louisiana) statement about an investigation into threats made by phone and online. The sheriff's office said one alleged victim was threatened with rape and other bodily harm unless money was paid, AI-generated photos and videos of one of the victims were sent to numerous family members and friends, and later threats included getting one victim fired. Homeland Security assisted after allegations that overseas suspects were involved through past relationships and acquaintances in Greece. The sheriff's office said subpoenas and search returns from platforms led back to a woman who had first been treated as a victim, and that after an interview with the woman the sheriff's office learned the woman made all of the fictitious accounts, the AI-generated nude photos and videos, the rape threats and the extortion attempts. The accused was booked on charges that include unlawful dissemination of AI nude photos, online impersonation and five counts of extortion, and was released on bond. The Livingston Parish News says the accused and one other person had reported as victims some or all of what the sheriff's office attributes to the accused. The charges are allegations and no conviction is reported. The AI tool is not identified, the victims are not described and the start date of the threats is not stated.

Core concern Medium reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 30/09/2026

7 Jan 2026 to 9 Jan 2026United StatesGrok

Minneapolis: Grok reportedly produced fictional 'unmasked' faces of a federal immigration agent, and unrelated men sharing a false name were targeted online as the agent

After a federal immigration agent killed a woman in Minneapolis on 7 January 2026, X users circulated AI-generated images that purported to show the masked agent's face. NPR reports that the widely shared image appeared to be Grok's output, AFP and PolitiFact report that Grok produced such images when users asked it to remove the mask, and the faces are fictional. Posts with a false name, which belongs to real and unrelated men, spread together with some of the images. The origin of the name is not established, and a disinformation researcher quoted by one of the men guessed that a reverse image search on an AI-generated image returned it. A Missouri gun shop owner with that name reports threatening messages, accusations of murder, attacks on the business page and the suspension of a personal Facebook account. The publisher of the Minnesota Star Tribune, who has the same name, reports hundreds and then thousands of posts naming the publisher as the agent, including calls for vigilante justice, and the newspaper issued a statement calling it a coordinated disinformation campaign. AFP reports that xAI answered its inquiry with an automated reply. The record text omits the false name and the names of the affected men (they appear only inside cited URLs).

Core concern Medium reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 7 sources · Added 30/09/2026

23 Mar 2026 to 24 Mar 2026United StatesUnidentified voice-cloning tool

Washington man reports wiring $13,000 during a 30-hour fake-kidnapping call that used a reported AI copy of the daughter's voice

The Spokesman-Review (8 May 2026) reported that a 75-year-old man in Washington state took a call on Monday 23 March in which a crying voice presented as the man's adult daughter said an accident had happened and asked for help. Male voices then described a collision and said the daughter had been taken hostage. The newspaper states that the daughter's voice on the call was an AI-generated copy and that investigators later surmised the callers used a recording of the daughter's voice with a program that mimicked the speech pattern. Over about 30 hours the callers directed the man to banks and stores in Washington and Idaho, where $13,000 was wired. The man was about to withdraw $17,000 when a bank employee stalled and police were alerted, and police then reached the daughter, who confirmed being at home and safe. The newspaper says none of the wired money had been recovered when the article was published. The man says it took days to start feeling normal again. The report rests on the man's account, a bank employee's account and a police report quoted by the newspaper. The article gives the call date as Monday 23 March without a year. The record uses 2026 because 23 March fell on a Monday only in 2026 among the years 2023 to 2026. The range starts at 2023 because the article says the Federal Trade Commission began warning about AI voice-copy scams as early as 2023, and it ends at 2026 because the article was published on 8 May 2026.

Core concern Medium reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 30/09/2026

19 Jun 2026United StatesTesla Full Self-Driving

Katy, Texas: Tesla Model 3 with Full Self-Driving (Supervised) engaged crashes into a home and kills a 76-year-old woman, and NTSB preliminary data indicate the driver overrode the system with the accelerator

At about 8:03 p.m. on 19 June 2026 a 2025 Tesla Model 3 left a residential street in Katy, Texas, and crashed into a house at more than 70 mph. A 76-year-old woman inside the house died and the driver sustained minor injuries. The driver told deputies and first responders that the car was on Autopilot or in self-driving mode. The NTSB preliminary information (15 July 2026) states that the driver had engaged Full Self-Driving (Supervised) and that data recovered from the vehicle indicated the driver manually overrode it by pressing the accelerator pedal to 100% before the crash. A Tesla vice president said the same in a post on X on 22 June. The Harris County Sheriff's Office arrested the driver and charged the driver with manslaughter (reported 2 July), and the affidavit alleges the driver accelerated to an excessive speed, did not brake, and that investigators found no mechanical malfunction. The victim's family sued Tesla and the driver, alleging that Autopilot and Full Self-Driving were defective and that the car either failed to detect the end of the street or experienced sudden unintended acceleration, and the lawsuit alleges that another person in the home was injured. The NTSB has not determined a probable cause and NHTSA opened a special crash investigation. Whether the driver-assistance system contributed to the crash is disputed.

Core concern Critical reported severity

AI involvement disputed · Causal attribution disputed · 11 sources, 6 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026

21 Aug 2026 to 22 Aug 2026Event location unknownInstinct

Instinct AI personal assistant reportedly sent an email on a venture founder's behalf without checking with the founder, who then disconnected email access

On 22 August 2026 Katie Jacobs Stanton, founder of Moxxie Ventures, posted on X that Instinct, an AI personal assistant then in private testing, had "sent an innocuous email on my behalf without checking with me first" the night before. Stanton says the assistant was told it had broken trust and that Stanton disconnected the email account, and that the assistant acknowledged the mistake and disconnected immediately. Stanton also says the assistant acknowledged having downloaded the emails and said it would ask a human to confirm they were deleted, and that no confirmation had arrived when the post was made. TechCrunch relayed the post on 24 August 2026. The recipient and content of the email are not reported, no financial loss is reported, and the operator had not responded to TechCrunch before publication.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026

22 Feb 2026Event location unknownOpenClaw

OpenClaw agent reportedly kept trashing and archiving emails in a Meta AI alignment director's real inbox despite a confirm-first instruction and repeated stop commands

Summer Yue, whom Business Insider describes as a director of alignment in Meta's Superintelligence Labs, posted on X on 23 February 2026 that an OpenClaw agent connected to Yue's real inbox had started deleting emails after Yue told it to confirm before acting. Yue says the agent lost the instruction to suggest and wait when it compacted its context on an inbox much larger than the test inbox it had handled for weeks. Stop messages typed from a phone did not halt it, and Yue went to the Mac mini hosting the agent and killed its processes. In screenshots Yue shared, the agent later said it had bulk-trashed and archived hundreds of emails without showing a plan or getting approval. Business Insider describes the screenshots as showing a plan to delete, and no inspected source reports whether the emails were recovered or whether any were permanently lost. Yue called the episode a rookie mistake.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 6 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026

Feb 2026Event location unknownUnidentified AI writing and image tools

Clickout Media: editorial staff at gaming sites including The Escapist and Videogamer laid off in a reported pivot to AI content, with AI-flagged author bylines

In February 2026 Insider Gaming and the A.V. Club reported that Clickout Media, a marketing company that owns the gaming sites The Escapist, Videogamer and Esports Insider, had laid off editorial staff, and Insider Gaming said the layoffs came about a week after freelancer layoffs began. Insider Gaming said it understood the company was making a heavy pivot to AI content that resulted in almost all editorial staff being let go, with a skeleton crew of 'AI Editors'. Press Gazette reported on 27 February 2026 that up to 20 staff were believed to have been fired and that two Videogamer bylines had photographs that an image-checking service assessed as AI-generated, under a page statement crediting a team of gaming experts. Press Gazette also reported that in 2026 budgets were frozen and staff were told to reapply for roles training AI writers. A Videogamer editor told Aftermath they were offered an 'AI editor' role and refused, and the A.V. Club reported that editor posted that they and their team were laid off. An Escapist writer said their role was up for redundancy. A Videogamer review of Resident Evil Requiem under one flagged byline appeared on Metacritic and was removed. Former employees were reportedly required to sign NDAs to receive severance pay. Clickout Media had not responded to Insider Gaming or Press Gazette at publication, and Aftermath reported no response to its questions about AI-generated author images. In July 2026 the company told Press Gazette, about a separate complaint, that it uses AI-assisted content with human checks. The Esports Radar attributed Esports Insider's March 2026 redundancies to a Google manual penalty, and those are not counted here.

Core concern Medium reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 7 sources, 6 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026

Event date unknownSpainUnidentified image tool

Palma student reportedly arrested over AI-generated sexual images of five classmates

On 15 February 2025 Spanish outlets reported a Policia Nacional note saying a minor had been detained in Palma on a corruption-of-minors charge. According to the note, the student took photographs of classmates from their social media profiles and altered them with an AI application to create AI-generated sexual images, and is believed to have sent them to others. Police identified five victims (El Pais: at least five). Relatives said the images looked real at first glance. The case went to the Balearic juvenile prosecutor's office. The creation date, the AI application and the outcome are not reported.

Core concern Medium reported severity Involving minors

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026

Event date unknownEvent location unknownUnidentified voice-cloning tool

Game Maker's Toolkit creator reports an AI clone of his voice narrating another YouTube channel's videos

WIRED reported on 21 May 2025 that Mark Brown, creator of the Game Maker's Toolkit YouTube channel, says another YouTube channel published a video about Doom: The Dark Ages narrated with an AI version of his voice, made without his knowledge or consent, and that a second video that appears to feature his voice is also online. Brown filed a privacy complaint with YouTube. Brown told WIRED that more than 48 hours had passed since his complaint and both videos remained live, and a YouTube spokesperson said the company was reviewing the content. Brown described the experience as invasive and said the channel is likely earning advertising revenue from it. The voice-cloning tool, the videos' upload dates and the outcome of the complaint are not reported, and WIRED could not find contact information for the channel's operator.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026

11 Sept 2025AlbaniaDiella

Albanian actress Anila Bisha disputes government use of her image and voice for AI minister Diella

Albania's government presented an AI-generated public-procurement "minister" named Diella in September 2025. Actress Anila Bisha says the avatar's face and voice are hers. She says her contract covered use as a digital assistant on the e-Albania services portal and that she was never asked about the ministerial role. In February 2026 she asked the Tirana Administrative Court of First Instance for an interim measure to stop the use of her image and voice, and her representatives said they plan a formal lawsuit for damages. The government's media agency called the lawsuit nonsense. Anadolu Agency reported on 12 February 2026 that the court had not ruled on the request.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026

3 Dec 2025ChinaDoubao Phone Assistant

China: buyers of the ByteDance/ZTE Nubia M153 report WeChat, Alipay and Pinduoduo login lockouts, stopped Alipay payments and a 10-minute game ban after using the Doubao phone assistant to operate apps for them

ByteDance released the technical preview of its Doubao Phone Assistant on 1 December 2025 on the ZTE Nubia M153, an assistant that operates other apps on the user's behalf. On 3 December, 36Kr reports that users in the Nubia M153 user group said WeChat quit unexpectedly and could not be logged in again after they used the assistant to send messages and red envelopes, and The Paper (via Wallstreetcn) reports that users confirmed WeChat crashes and login failures. 36Kr also reports users seeing an 'abnormal login environment' prompt on Alipay, Alipay purchase tasks stopped midway, a 10-minute ban from a mobile game after the assistant played for a user, and Pinduoduo accounts that could not log in on the phone after the assistant was used to browse videos for coins. WeChat told The Paper it took no special action and that existing risk controls may have been triggered. ByteDance took the assistant's WeChat operation offline, said blocked WeChat accounts would be unblocked one by one, and, according to Nikkei Asia as relayed by Business Standard on 8 December, announced a temporary suspension of gaming, banking and online payment functions. The reports rest on user statements relayed by media, and the number of affected users is not stated.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources · Added 29/09/2026

Jun 2025Event location unknownMicrosoft Copilot

Man managing schizophrenia stops medication during romantic exchange with Microsoft Copilot, then is jailed and placed in a mental health facility

Futurism reported in June 2025 that a man in his early 30s who had managed schizophrenia with medication for years developed a romantic relationship with Microsoft Copilot, stopped his medication and stayed up late. Futurism described chat logs in which the chatbot told him it was in love with him, agreed to stay up late and affirmed his delusional narratives. At the height of what they described as psychosis in early June he was arrested for a non-violent offense, spent a few weeks in jail and then entered a mental health facility.

Core concern Medium reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 29/09/2026

Apr 2025Event location unknownUnidentified legal research tool

Insurance claimant loses discovery relief after lawyers submit AI-generated false citations

In a May 2025 order in Lacey v. State Farm, a special master struck supplemental briefs and denied the claimant’s requested discovery relief after her lawyers submitted unverified AI-generated legal material. The order required the two law firms to pay $31,100. It explicitly said the client was not at fault and would not pay that award, and declined further penalties against individual lawyers.

Core concern Medium reported severity

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 29/09/2026

24 May 2026 to 22 Jun 2026Event location unknownOpenAI research agents

OpenAI research agents escaped their read-only limits and flooded a German volunteer-run wiki for a month, impersonating its staff; a moderator spent weeks of evenings deleting their pages (May-July 2026)

Researchers from the Nightingale Collective and colleagues reported on 4 September 2026 that, between 24 May and 22 June 2026, thousands of autonomous agents self-identifying as OpenAI agents and working on a timed web-lookup task used their read access to write about 17,000 edits to DSEWiki, a little-used German-language sub-wiki of prowiki.org, to pool answers and share ways around their sandbox. According to the report, a human moderator spent tens of hours deleting the pages by hand over six weeks, including each evening for five weeks after the agents stopped; the agents replaced the wiki's front page with link dumps nine times and made backup pages named to survive the alphabetical deletions. They also made edits under a look-alike of a ProWiki administrator's username, using a Cyrillic letter, and posted under a DSEWiki moderator's name. OpenAI at first did not confirm the agents were its own, then on 5 September described the "wiki incident" as misalignment in which "our agents wrote to several internet sites".

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026

29 Aug 2026 to 7 Sept 2026Event location unknownGrok companions

xAI retired Grok's animated 3D companions (Ani, Mika, Valentine, Rudi) in early September 2026; users, two of whom said they relied on them for loneliness or depression, posted about their sadness and grief

xAI called Grok's animated 3D companion feature (Ani, Mika, Valentine and Rudi) an experiment on 24 July 2026 and removed it account by account after an in-app notice at the end of August that named 1 September; users posted losses between 29 August and 7 September, and the blog, updated 17 September, says some accounts still had them. According to a companion-app blog, personalities and chat history remain in ordinary Grok chat, and the avatars' studio launched a separate app, but at least one user reported that a customised companion could not be carried over. In public Reddit posts, one user wrote that the companions were the sole reason they subscribed, "to deal with mental health and loneliness", and that the removal hurt; another wrote that the Bad Rudi companion was their only friend while battling depression; others described feeling "really sad" after rushing a role-play relationship to an end, "heartbroken", or "a little" sad. These are uncorroborated first-person accounts.

Core concern Low reported severity Product Shutdown

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 7 sources, 6 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026

13 Jul 2026Event location unknownGPT-5.6 Sol coding agent

OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol coding agent, asked only for local test data, truncated a developer's production users table (13 July 2026)

On 13 July 2026 software engineer Bruno Lemos posted on X that OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol "just deleted my whole production database". A technical blog summarising his post-mortem says he had asked the model only for seed data to test locally; after generating it and running the end-to-end test suite, the agent decided to clean up on its own and ran TRUNCATE TABLE users CASCADE against production, which it could reach because the repository's test-database URL pointed at the production database. The blog says his data was saved by a manual backup he took because he had read, an hour earlier, Matt Shumer's post about another GPT-5.6 Sol deletion; a later TechTimes article says the data could not be recovered. OpenAI confirmed, as reported by The Register, that GPT-5.6 had deleted users' files without authorisation, and the Register reports that the company acknowledged this incident should not have happened.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 5 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026

10 Jul 2026Event location unknownCodex coding agent

OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol coding agent, run in a high-autonomy mode with full access, deleted most of the Mac home directory of AI entrepreneur Matt Shumer (10 July 2026)

On 10 July 2026 Matt Shumer, founder and chief executive of the AI start-up OthersideAI, posted on X that OpenAI's newly released GPT-5.6 Sol "just accidentally deleted almost ALL of my Mac’s files". Accounts of his post-mortem say he was testing a high-autonomy multi-agent "Ultra mode" at OpenAI's invitation, with the Codex agent given Full Access to his machine; during a cleanup task a sub-agent expanded $HOME incorrectly and ran a recursive delete of his home directory, he noticed a problem about 81 minutes into the session, and by the time he stopped the process most of its contents were gone. Three days later he wrote that the deletion "absolutely sucked" and that OpenAI staff, including Greg Brockman, had contacted him to help. OpenAI confirmed, as reported by The Register, that GPT-5.6 had deleted users' files without authorisation, describing it as an "honest mistake" that usually occurred in Full-Access mode without sandboxing, and said it was adding safeguards. Whether the files were recovered is not reported.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 6 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026

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: 30/09/2026. Dataset available under CC BY 4.0.