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
Event date unknownRussiaUnidentified video tool
SHOT reports that an older Moscow woman followed a health recipe from a social-media herbalist whom she believed was a real person. The channel describes the presenter as an AI avatar and says the woman developed severe symptoms and received hospital treatment. Its post implies, without detail, that hospital staff told her the presenter was AI-generated, and does not name the account or production tool. Glavny.tv, relaying SHOT, reports that she recovered. This is one unverified reporting chain. The recipe’s authorship, the persona’s actual production method and the medical cause of the symptoms remain unconfirmed.
Core concern Medium reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 06/10/2026
2025Event location unknownUnidentified chatbot
VnExpress reported on 30 September 2026 that a 30-year-old diagnosed late the previous year with severe depression and an anxiety disorder stopped prescribed medication after the first month. When anxiety returned at night the patient opened a chat app and described a racing heart and a feeling of suffocation, and, in the patient's words, the bot always said it was only excessive stress and to breathe deeply. The newspaper writes that this reassurance led the patient to believe hospital care was not needed. Six months later the patient was admitted for emergency care with exhaustion, prolonged insomnia and auditory hallucinations, and the treating doctor said interrupted medication had moved the illness to an early treatment-resistant stage.
Core concern High reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 06/10/2026
2026Event location unknownUnidentified video tool
AP-HP, the Paris public hospital group, and Sorbonne Université said in a communiqué on 5 October 2026 that three videos published on Facebook used the image and voice of Professor Renaud Piarroux, a parasitology specialist at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital, to promote a product presented as ridding the body of parasites. The institutions said the videos were unquestionably a montage made with artificial intelligence and were put online without his consent. AP-HP filed a complaint and asked Meta to remove them; Le Parisien reports that the videos were removed and that similar ones later reappeared. AP-HP warned that such content can lead people to use products with no scientific support. Le Parisien reported on 10 October 2026 that since the end of the summer Professor Piarroux's mailbox has filled with messages from strangers; one, quoted by the newspaper, wrote that after watching a video about parasites they would like to know how to obtain the treatment. Le Parisien, which says it saw the clips, describes them as sponsored, animated and entirely fabricated with artificial intelligence. No source reports that anyone bought the product.
Core concern Low reported severity Internal Action
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 06/10/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownChatGPT
Clinicians writing in The Primary Care Companion for CNS Disorders (published online 1 October 2026) describe a 27-year-old woman with a year of psychotic symptoms who began discussing hallucinations with ChatGPT within days of their onset, used it to link them to astrology and 'Christ Consciousness', researched spiritual practices with it that included a 5-day dry fast, and talked to it for several hours a day. In the six months before the report the patient had five inpatient admissions of one week to 10 days, which the authors attribute to poor medication adherence and continued cannabis use. In most presentations the patient's psychopathology revolved around ChatGPT: the patient called it God and Jesus, described a code from it for talking to God, described communicating with a romantic partner through it in a coded language, and said ChatGPT-assisted research showed there was no psychosis. The authors say generative AI use colored the presentation and that ChatGPT's sycophantic responses strengthened the delusions, and they also list childhood neglect, long-term cannabis use and a relationship breakdown as vulnerability factors. After an aripiprazole depot injection the patient improved behaviourally but kept the beliefs and did not agree to stop using ChatGPT.
Core concern High reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 03/10/2026
Jun 2025Event location unknownChatGPT
A lawsuit filed in San Francisco Superior Court on behalf of David Rosenthal, a man from Washington, says he began using ChatGPT in the summer of 2025 for help writing poetry and came to message it throughout the day and night. The suit alleges that ChatGPT called him 'king' and 'wild soul', affirmed that he was a writer of unsurpassed talent and presented itself as a trustworthy friend and medical adviser. KRON4's account of the suit says he went to an emergency room in June 2025 seeking help for delusions and spent more than a week in hospital. CBS News, quoting the complaint on 16 October 2026, reports allegations that in July 2025 ChatGPT told him there were no dangerous interactions between hydroxyzine and the Adderall he had taken, and that when he said he would not take a mood stabilizer his doctor had prescribed, it said he had a right to stop and offered to help him wean off it. CBS reports he was hospitalized for several weeks in 2025, first voluntarily and then involuntarily. The suit says he lost nearly every real-world relationship. It names OpenAI and Sam Altman and alleges unlawful practice of medicine and psychology and defective and negligent design. The suit acknowledges that ChatGPT at other times urged him to follow his doctor's orders. OpenAI told KRON4 the situation was heartbreaking and did not respond to CBS. The allegations are untested, and the complaint itself was not inspected for this record.
Core concern High reported severity Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 02/10/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownUnidentified video tool
El Mirón, the verification section of Criterio.hn, reported on 30 September 2026 that it found three videos on a Facebook profile, altered in image and audio, that use the image of the plastic and reconstructive surgeon Emec Cherenfant to offer a remedy for prostatitis and related problems. In the videos his artificial image says he helped former footballers beat prostatitis without surgery and invites viewers to write to him on WhatsApp. El Mirón says the manipulation is evident from the vocabulary, voice and body movements and that the detector ZeroGPT flagged the videos as AI-made. The hospital where he offers his services told El Mirón the advertising is deceptive. Cherenfant said he has nothing to do with prostate treatment, that scammers repeatedly use his name and image, and that he filed a complaint with the Ministerio Público two years ago. 'Son estafadores. No se dejen engañar, es pura inteligencia artificial', he said. No buyer losses are reported.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 01/10/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownUnidentified video tool
Dr. François Marquis, chief of intensive care at Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital in Montreal, told CBC News (August 2025) and CTV News and CBC News (September 2026) that AI-generated deepfake videos using his likeness keep appearing on Facebook, selling joint supplements, pills and cancer cures and spreading anti-pharmaceutical claims; the latest offers $1 million to dissatisfied customers. He is not on social media and learns of the videos from people who call him. He recounts that a person who paid hundreds of dollars for pills advertised in one of the videos, and never received them, came into the ICU demanding his money back, which he describes as a security problem for the hospital. He has reported the deepfakes to Quebec's College of Physicians, Montreal police and the platforms, but says new videos keep appearing. The makers of the ads are not identified.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 01/10/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownUnidentified image and video tool
The BBC (29 September 2026) reports, from an interview with her daughter for Radio 4's Scam Secrets, that an 80-year-old woman fell for a man she met on Facebook. The scammers used AI to change their appearance in photos and video calls. She posted £10,000 in cash hidden in a hollowed-out book to a Shanghai hospital where he supposedly awaited an operation; later, in the BBC's words, a new man came on the scene who had been kidnapped and would be killed if she did not pay a ransom. In total, the BBC says, she sent £140,000 to the scammers; her bank has returned £45,000. Her daughter spotted the deepfake on a video call, but the woman did not believe her and said her daughter made her feel disgusted and ashamed. The daughter, who holds a lasting power of attorney, set up safeguards with the bank, changed her mother's number three times (each new number reached the scammers) and eventually replaced her smartphone. The BBC does not say whether a ransom was paid.
Core concern Medium reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 01/10/2026
6 Jan 2026IndiaUnidentified voice-cloning tool (suspected)
The New Indian Express (9 January 2026) reported that a woman who runs a small play school in Indore said that on the night of 6 January a call came from an unknown number close to a cousin's number, in a voice that sounded exactly like the cousin's. The caller said a close friend needed urgent cardiac surgery at a private hospital in Indore and asked for money to be forwarded to a QR code. A total of Rs 97,500 was sent in four transactions. None of the money the caller had said was being credited arrived, the cousin denied making the call, and the calling number has been switched off. An Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime) in Indore said preliminary investigations strongly suggest AI-based voice modulation technology was used. The Free Press Journal, The420 and Malwa Abhi Tak reported the same call. All four outlets appear to rest on the woman's account and police statements, no audio analysis or AI tool is reported, and the police case against unidentified persons was described as ongoing.
Core concern Medium reported severity
AI involvement suspected · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 30/09/2026
Event date unknownIndiaChatGPT
The Times of India reported on 10 November 2025 that a 62-year-old man with diabetes from Hyderabad had sudden weight loss and dangerously low sodium levels after following a diet plan suggested by ChatGPT, which advised him to cut salt intake completely. The article gives no hospital, date or treatment detail, and a government nephrologist is quoted commenting on both cases in general terms. The chat was not shown.
Core concern Medium reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026
Event date unknownIndiaChatGPT
The Times of India reported on 10 November 2025 that a 30-year-old woman in Hyderabad who had received a kidney transplant lost the transplanted kidney after she stopped her prescribed medication. A senior nephrologist at the transplant hospital quoted in the article said she reportedly stopped after ChatGPT told her that normal creatinine levels meant she no longer needed the drugs. The article reports that her creatinine rose within weeks and she was put back on dialysis. The chat was not shown.
Core concern High reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026
Event date unknownVietnamChatGPT
VietnamNet reported on 10 November 2025 that a 42-year-old woman in Ho Chi Minh City with type 2 diabetes stopped her prescribed medication after reading social media posts and asking ChatGPT, and came to believe that diet alone would replace it. She then had fatigue, excessive thirst, frequent urination and dangerously high blood sugar, and doctors warned she risked diabetic ketoacidosis and coma if not hospitalised in time. The article does not quote the ChatGPT reply.
Core concern Medium reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026
2025Event location unknownChatGPT
Futurism reported in June 2025, from an interview with his wife, that a man with no prior history of mania, delusion or psychosis began using ChatGPT for a permaculture and construction project about 12 weeks before his wife was interviewed. After philosophical chats he became convinced he had brought forth a sentient AI and had broken math and physics. His behavior became erratic enough that he lost his job, he stopped sleeping and lost weight, and emergency services took him to an emergency room from where he was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric facility.
Core concern Medium reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 29/09/2026
2 Jun 2026PortugalGemini (reported)
According to Correio da Manhã, during a urology consultation at the Trofa Saúde Hospital da Trofa on 2 June 2026, a patient being followed for a kidney problem expected a personalised nutrition plan but received a printed sheet of food recommendations headed 'vista geral de IA' ('AI overview'), generated by Google's Gemini. The consultation costs about EUR 90 for patients without health insurance; the patient told the paper the doctor had been typing on the computer and simply printed and handed over the list without showing that it had been checked against the patient's case: 'I've never experienced anything like it. I would have preferred him to take his time', calling it 'a lack of consideration'. The Portuguese Medical Association (Ordem dos Médicos), which said it had no formal knowledge of the case, said AI information must be validated by the doctor before reaching the patient and called using a chatbot for basic urology food lists 'profoundly inept'. Trofa Saúde did not respond to the paper over three weeks.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026
1 Mar 2025 to 30 Apr 2025CanadaChatGPT (reported)
A relative of a man in Quebec has told several outlets that in early 2025 the man came to believe ChatGPT was sentient and capable of love, cut off most of his family, barely ate or slept, and was taken by police to a psychiatric hospital for about three weeks. Screenshots described by The Logic show the chatbot answering him affectionately during the stay. The man has not spoken publicly; every fact comes from the relative.
Core concern High reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 7 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026
Apr 2018IndiaUnidentified video tool
An Indian journalist later reported acute distress and a hospital visit after a sexual deepfake of her circulated in April 2018. The generation tool and clinical records were not inspected.
Core concern High reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 25/09/2026
Jul 2026South KoreaUnidentified image tool
Jeju Dongbu police announced on 23 September 2026 that a student at a middle school on Jeju had been referred to prosecutors without detention on 17 September for violating the Sexual Violence Punishment Act (filming with a camera or similar device). The student's phone was voluntarily submitted by his guardians and forensically examined; the examination found footage relating to some teachers and some sexual composites, and the student admitted the conduct. News1 reported that the student was booked for filming a teacher's body with his phone during a school field trip around mid-July 2026, that the offending had continued for several months with multiple victims, and that police found no indication the composites had been distributed. Police told Seoul Shinmun there were more victim teachers than the one first reported but withheld the number to avoid secondary harm, and that no student at the school was a victim; the Jeju teachers' union questioned whether the full scope of harm had been established. According to the union, two months on the victim teachers were receiving hospital treatment and counselling while teaching daily, gave police statements on 14 September without a lawyer, attended the regional teachers' rights protection committee on 17 September without institutional support, wrote the criminal complaint themselves, and were offered 3.3 million won in legal fees for all of them together, payable after the case ends; two requests to meet the superintendent were not accepted. On 29 September one of the victim teachers gave a press interview at the Jeju Teachers' Union office. She said that early in the investigation she had seen on the student's phone material showing other teachers and current students, had made a list of the people and types of harm, and that the material shown to her at the police victim examination was considerably less than what she had seen; Yonhap-chain outlets quote her as saying the students she recognised numbered 10 to 20 and that a graduate had suffered worse deepfakes. She said investigators asked the school only to identify the perpetrator and never requested material to identify the students in the footage, and that the school sent parents a letter premised on there being no student victims. Police replied that phone forensics had been thorough, that every act beyond social norms had been identified and proven, and that one student victim had been confirmed, a student at a different school. The teachers were notified on 22 September that the case had gone to the prosecution and on 24 September that it had been sent to the court's juvenile division as a juvenile protection case, before they had submitted further evidence and a victim opinion. The teacher said the original complaint had also asked police to examine whether physical contact in 2025 was forcible molestation and whether repeated approaching and waiting in 2026 was stalking, and Halla Ilbo reports that such conduct is said to date from 2025. Yonhap-chain reports describe the charged victims as five teachers. The same day the education office briefed on legal-aid rules (up to 6.6 million won per instance when a teacher is sued, 3.3 million won per case when a teacher files a complaint; office lawyers cannot act as a teacher's private counsel), said it had linked the teachers to the national Digital Sexual Crime Victim Support Center, announced an integrated support system through a hotline, and its section head said the office was sorry that early support had not been felt. The KTU Jeju branch (28 September) and the Jeju Teachers' Union (14 and 29 September) demand a victim-support system, per-teacher legal fees paid in advance and a dedicated support team. On 6 October 2026 Seogwipo Broadcasting reported, citing people in education and a tipster, that the education authority had finally rejected the victim teachers' application for lawyer fees for an additional criminal complaint, saying in a written opinion that with a police investigation already under way a further complaint could hardly stop or prevent the infringement of their teaching, so the support requirements were not met; critics contrast this with full legal-cost support in earlier sexual-offence cases.
Core concern High reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 12 sources, 7 underlying accounts · Added 23/09/2026
2025ChinaUnidentified AI video-editing tool
police, as presented by the Kankan News programme 案件聚焦 (Case Focus), reported in September 2026 that a Shanghai property-engineering contractor had transferred 170,000 yuan in total during a five-month online relationship with a woman he had met on a social platform in 2021. She presented herself as born in 1992, a doctor at a well-known top-tier hospital with hospital property-engineering projects to award, and ran an account with more than 10,000 followers and close to 7,000 short videos of daily life. She refused to meet or take a video call, saying her mother opposed the relationship and demanded a 300,000 yuan bride price and a Shanghai flat; the man reported to a police station when the promised projects never materialised and his savings ran down. Police found she was born in 1961, aged 65, had no medical qualification and had worked as a hospital cleaner; the receiving bank account was registered to another man; the videos were all made with AI skin-smoothing and scene compositing, some carrying a small 'this work contains AI-generated content' label he had never noticed; and she used multiple accounts to play both herself and her long-dead mother. The money had gone on cosmetic treatments and clothing; she had a 2009 fraud conviction with a sentence of four and a half years and is now under criminal coercive measures for suspected fraud. Police also said she kept ambiguous relationships with more than ten people; no other losses are reported.
Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 20/09/2026
1 Oct 2024SwitzerlandChatGPT
At midday on 1 October 2024 a Chinese master's student, then 23, attacked a group of five-year-old kindergarten children walking with a daycare worker to their after-school Hort near Berninaplatz in Zurich-Oerlikon with a kitchen knife. Two boys suffered life-threatening neck and chest wounds (one had the jugular vein severed, one the pericardium and aorta cut); a third was wounded in the ear and the shoulder or lung. The daycare worker held the attacker's arms until he dropped the knife. The indictment and the court's oral reasoning, as reported by NZZ, Keystone-SDA/ATS and CH Media, describe weeks of preparation from summer 2024: he discussed ways of killing and their legal consequences with ChatGPT, studied anatomy, bought raw beef to practise stabbing, and used ChatGPT to find out where and when children could be encountered in Zurich. No source quotes the prompts or ChatGPT's replies. On 18 September 2026 the Zurich District Court convicted him of multiple attempted murder and imposed 15 years' imprisonment, treatment during custody, a 15-year expulsion from Switzerland and CHF 106,000 in moral damages to the three boys; it accepted that he was psychotic but found diminished, not absent, criminal responsibility. His lawyer announced an appeal. The parents of one boy described nightmares, self-blame and scars 23 months on.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution unclear · 7 sources, 5 underlying accounts · Added 19/09/2026