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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
25
Countries with reported events
1
Located 25 of 25 cases · 0 unknown
Languages in checked sources
7
Recorded for 25 of 25 cases

1 case has no reviewed AI-to-person relation yet: 0 not yet reviewed and 1 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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25 of 868 published cases · page 2 of 2

24 Jul 2026 to 26 Jul 2026IndiaUnidentified facial recognition system

Delhi: the police facial-recognition system logged at least 25 people who were in Tihar, Mandoli or Rohini jails as present at the Jantar Mantar student protests (20 to 26 July 2026), with timestamps on 24 to 26 July, on a sworn list of 2,873 persons with 'criminal antecedents' that the Supreme Court allowed police to register a fresh FIR against (Indian Express investigation, 4 September 2026)

In an affidavit of 17 August 2026 before the Supreme Court of India, Delhi Police said its Facial Recognition System (FRS) had identified 2,873 people with criminal antecedents at the Jantar Mantar protests of 20 to 26 July 2026 (2,402 through its 'Crime Kundli' biometric database and 471 through other criminal records). On 1 September the Court quashed the FIRs against the student protesters but let the police proceed against the 2,873; the police say any action will follow field verification. The Indian Express checked the 205 listed people facing murder, attempted-murder, rape or child-sexual-offence charges against police, prison and court records and found that at least 25 of them (17 accused of murder, four of rape (two or three under POCSO; the Express's narrative and its list differ), four of attempted murder) were lodged in Delhi's Tihar, Mandoli or Rohini prisons when the system logged them at the protest site with timestamps on 24, 25 and 26 July; some had been in custody for years. Delhi Police told the newspaper that further verification of the 2,873 was pending and, in its affidavit, that no action is taken solely on a facial-recognition result and that field verification follows each match. The police disclosed in 2022, in reply to a Right to Information request, that it treats a match with an 80 per cent similarity score as positive. Whether any of the 25 has since been named in the fresh FIR or visited for verification is not reported.

Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Investigation Opened

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 24/09/2026

16 Sept 2026IndiaUnidentified video tool

Rajasthan: a social-media influencer's video of a Ganga dip at Haridwar was manipulated with AI into an objectionable reel that went viral; she says she is mentally disturbed and cannot leave her house, and filed a cyber-crime complaint on 16 September 2026

A Rajasthan social-media influencer visited Haridwar with her family in June 2026 and on 6 June uploaded to Instagram a short video, recorded by relatives, of herself taking a dip in the Ganga at Har Ki Pauri wearing a salwar suit. About two months later she found that the video had been manipulated with AI into an objectionable version showing the same movements with her face and body portrayed 'in a shameful manner'; the fake reel went viral in the week before 20 September and drew objectionable comments and re-sharing. In a public appeal she asked whoever uploaded it to remove it, saying it was a matter of her dignity, that she was mentally very disturbed and had reached a point where she could not step out of her house. She filed a complaint with the cyber-crime police on 16 September 2026; the investigating Rajasthan Police Service officer said they were trying to identify who created and circulated the video and to have it removed, and that identifying the accused would take time. Dainik Bhaskar's English edition reported the case on 20 September in a 'Sunday Big Story' that does not name her.

Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 21/09/2026

Event date unknownIndiaUnidentified image tool

Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh: a young woman reported that an unknown person made AI deepfake images placing her face on another man's photo and sent them to her future in-laws' Instagram accounts to break off her marriage; police registered a case against unknown persons

Dainik Bhaskar reported on 19 September 2026 that a young woman in the Chaubepur police-station area of Varanasi complained that an unknown person, who had been calling her repeatedly from an unknown number, created a fake Instagram profile resembling her name, used an AI tool to place her face on another young man's photograph to produce objectionable images, and sent them to the Instagram accounts of her prospective in-laws and her prospective brother-in-law with the aim of breaking off her prospective marriage. Chaubepur police registered a case against unknown persons on the basis of a public-hearing reference (1621/26); the station in-charge said digital information about the phone number and the fake account was being gathered with cyber experts to identify and locate the accused, and that action would follow once the accused's role was clear. The report is a single local account of the complaint; the dates of the images and the complaint are not stated.

Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 20/09/2026

27 Mar 2024IndiaUnidentified voice-cloning tool (suspected)

Kanpur vegetable seller reportedly transferred Rs 1 lakh after a WhatsApp call in a voice like his nephew's; police say it prima facie involves deepfake AI

Amar Ujala (Kanpur, 10 April 2024) reports that a vegetable seller received a WhatsApp call on 27 March in which a person spoke in a voice resembling his nephew's, saying he had been picked up by police on his way to Kanpur; a second caller posing as a police sub-inspector said the nephew was named in a rape-and-murder case and demanded Rs 2 lakh. The seller transferred Rs 60,000 to one bank account and then, with Rs 40,000 borrowed from nearby shopkeepers, Rs 40,000 to a second account. When a voice note demanded another Rs 1 lakh he told the shopkeepers, phoned his brother-in-law and learned the call was a fraud. Police registered a case under the IT Act citing fraud and the use of deepfake AI, and the Central zone DCP is quoted saying the case prima facie appears connected with deepfake AI and the cyber cell is investigating. No recording or forensic finding is reported, so whether the voice was AI-generated or a human impersonation is not established.

Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened

AI involvement suspected · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 15/09/2026

6 Mar 2026IndiaChatGPT (reported)

Police say two Surat students found dead had searched ChatGPT about suicide

Two college students were found dead in a washroom on a temple campus in Surat, Gujarat, on 6 March 2026, and police said their preliminary investigation pointed to suicide. Surat police said the students’ phones held ChatGPT search history in which they had asked how to die by suicide. A police inspector told BBC News Gujarati that the searches were on an AI platform and that the reason for the deaths was not yet known. No inspected source describes what ChatGPT replied. Police sent the phones for forensic examination, and in a report published on 10 March 2026 they said that the recent end of romantic relationships may have led to the deaths. No forensic result had been reported in the sources found.

Core concern Critical reported severity Investigation Opened

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution unclear · 8 sources, 4 underlying accounts · Added 23/03/2026

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: 23/10/2026. Dataset available under CC BY 4.0.