30 Sept 2024Event location unknownBaidu AI smart answer
A practising lawyer in Nanjing, China, found in September 2024 that Baidu search's 'AI smart answer' (AI 智能回答) feature, asked how many years he had been sentenced to, answered that he had been sentenced to three years in prison for a criminal offence and showed his photograph in a lawyer's robe. According to the first-instance judgment as quoted in the press, the answer was produced on 30 September 2024. The lawyer says he complained repeatedly to Baidu by letter, hotline and email without the content being fully removed, and he sued. The Jiangbei New Area People's Court in Nanjing found that Baidu had combined text and his picture through AI into false, disparaging content aimed at him, that Baidu was at fault, and that this was defamation; it ordered a written apology and rejected his claims for lost income and emotional damages for lack of evidence. Baidu argued that AI hallucinations could not be foreseen. The Nanjing Intermediate People's Court dismissed Baidu's appeal on 12 March 2026. The lawyer applied for enforcement when no apology came, and in September 2026 said he had received Baidu's written apology; Baidu has applied for a retrial.
Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 22/10/2026
Jul 2024South KoreaUnidentified image tool
In July 2024 a high-school student in Incheon, South Korea, composited the faces of two female teachers at his school and of others, including an academy senior and an instructor, onto nude photos and posted them on social media, according to the charges as reported by Yonhap, the Hankyoreh, the JoongAng Ilbo and the Kyunghyang Shinmun, which describe the technique as AI-based deepfake technology. He had also secretly photographed teachers in class. He was expelled after a teachers' rights committee hearing. On 27 August 2025 the Incheon District Court gave him an indeterminate prison term of one year to one year six months and took him into custody; the court said that as a result the victimised teacher had left teaching and had not returned. On 19 December 2025, after he had turned adult, the appeal division raised the sentence to three years, calling the offence close to 'character assassination' and the teachers' mental shock considerable; OBS reports the sentence is final. On 21 October 2026, according to the Incheon Teachers' Union, a civil judge at the Incheon District Court ordered him, now 20, to pay one teacher 17.7 million won of the roughly 72 million won she claimed.
Core concern High reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 6 sources · Added 21/10/2026
26 Dec 2024ChinaUnidentified AI data-collection system
A technology company in Beijing employed a worker from July 2009 as a data collector doing manual map-data collection. In early 2024 the company moved that work to automated data collection led by AI technology and abolished the worker's department and post, and on 26 December 2024 it terminated the worker's contract, citing a major change in the objective circumstances on which the contract was based. The worker applied for labour arbitration, and the arbitration commission found the dismissal unlawful, according to a typical case that the Beijing human resources and social security bureau released on 26 December 2025, as reported by China National Radio, China News Service and HK01. The commission said that introducing AI was the company's own business decision and lacked the unforeseeable and unavoidable character the contract-law provision requires, and that the company had shifted the business risk of technical change onto the worker.
AI relation unknown Medium reported severity Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 17/10/2026
8 Nov 2024ItalyUnidentified video tool
The satirical television programme Striscia la Notizia, published by R.T.I., aired segments in which the image and voice of the journalist Enrico Mentana, director of La7's news bulletin, were, according to the Garante, manipulated with AI systems so that he appeared in his own studio making statements he never made (its decision describes real footage from his studio altered by AI dubbing); a November 2024 preview describes one such segment. After Mentana complained, Italy's data protection authority (Garante) found on 23 July 2026 that the realism of the images, the low perceptibility of the alteration and the plausibility of the statements could lead the public to think the content authentic, and that the disclaimers were not clear enough. It found breaches of GDPR Articles 5 and 25, issued a warning to R.T.I. and prohibited further processing of his data in that way. The Garante noted the numerous mocking or offensive messages he received on social media. R.T.I. argued that the segments were satire, that it only dubbed licensed footage with a computer-generated voice, and that its disclaimers made the deepfake evident. No fine was imposed.
Core concern Low reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 17/10/2026
2024Event location unknownUnidentified voice-cloning tool
According to the Beijing Internet Court's account, released on 16 October 2026 among typical cases on online infringement involving older people, a culture company selling family parenting books commissioned a livestream sales host in 2024 to make promotional short videos. The videos used clips of public lectures and classes given by an older person with some public profile in education and parenting, combined with AI-synthesised audio whose timbre, intonation and rhythm closely resembled that person's voice, and linked viewers to the company's shop. Neither the images nor the audio had been authorised. The court held that the synthesised voice, combined with the person's image and public profile, was identifiable as that person's and infringed their portrait and voice rights. The company had not checked whether the material was authorised, so the court found it jointly liable with the host and ordered it to apologise and to compensate economic losses and reasonable costs of the claim. The amounts, the judgment date and the tool are not reported.
Core concern Low reported severity Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 17/10/2026
Aug 2024Event location unknownUnidentified AI presentation and data-analysis tool
A legal officer at an insurance company, responsible for compliance audits and risk checks, uploaded a company audit-issues data table that she had compiled and processed to a third-party AI platform in July 2024, to help make presentations and analyse data. According to the court's account, she did so on the recommendation of company leadership. In August 2024 the company served her a notice terminating her labour contract for serious violation of its rules, arguing that as a compliance employee bound by a confidentiality agreement she had exposed internal audit material to a platform that collects and retains user data for model iteration. The Chaoyang District People's Court in Beijing ruled at first instance that the dismissal was unlawful: the company's rules did not prohibit third-party AI tools, it had given no training on their use, and it had not shown that the table was core confidential information or that any leak or loss occurred. The court revoked the termination notice, ordered the contract to continue and ordered the company to pay the employee's year-end bonus shortfall, performance pay and lost wages. Kuai Keji, citing China National Radio, reported the ruling on 13 October 2026 and Beijing Daily on 14 October; both say the judgment has taken effect. No source names the insurer or the AI platform.
AI relation unknown Medium reported severity Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 15/10/2026
2024United StatesUnidentified voice-cloning tool (suspected)
While campaigning in 2024 for a Broward County court seat, Lauren Peffer, now a county judge, sought the endorsement of the South Florida Sun Sentinel editorial board. Asked to back her claim of an image crisis in Florida's judiciary, she cited a self-published book by a fired employee of the Ninth Judicial Circuit and supplied a recording purportedly of a phone call about the book between Chief Justice Carlos Muñiz, Justice Renatha Francis and the circuit's chief judge, Lisa Munyon. The Florida Judicial Qualifications Commission's notice of formal charges, filed in May 2025, said the recording was fabricated, likely using computer manipulation or generative AI, and that while the voices resembled those of the participants, the manner of speech, tone and much of the content were objectively unrealistic. The notice said she had shared it despite clear evidence of its inauthenticity and had perpetuated a false perception of illegal, unethical or immoral conduct by the justices, a chief judge and others in the judicial branch. Peffer apologised, said the content was created by a third party with whom she had no ties, and testified that she could not explain why she had thought it valid. According to Bloomberg Law, the Florida Supreme Court on 9 October 2026 suspended her for 30 days and fined her $10,000, saying her conduct undermined public confidence in the judiciary by implicating sitting justices; the two justices whose voices were faked recused. Who made the recording, and with what tool, is not reported.
Core concern Low reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement suspected · Causal attribution alleged · 6 sources · Added 12/10/2026
Dec 2024 to Sept 2026AustraliaUnidentified AI writing tool
In December 2024 the Parole Board of Tasmania added a condition to the parole of Susan Neill-Fraser, released in 2022 after serving 13 years for murder and who maintains her innocence, barring her from communicating with media to claim innocence or wrongful conviction; a broader condition replaced it in May 2025. On 15 September 2026 the Supreme Court of Tasmania declared the conditions invalid. Her counsel told the court that the board's secretary had used artificial intelligence to prepare a rationale document justifying the condition and that it cited case law that did not exist. The Human Rights Law Centre, which represented her, says the State conceded that the board's decision-making was affected by a document containing legal authorities that were likely AI-generated hallucinations, and the ABC reports the court found the board relied on that document. The board had withdrawn the condition in August 2026. Tasmania's Attorney-General announced an independent investigation of the board's professional standards over its use of unverified AI, and the Justice Department announced a review of AI use in past parole decisions.
Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 6 sources, 4 underlying accounts · Added 06/10/2026
2024Event location unknownUnidentified image tool
Stomp reported on 4 October 2026, citing Shin Min Daily News, that a man was sentenced to 27 months’ jail after pleading guilty to four of ten charges involving the taking, distribution and possession of intimate images. According to the report, he secretly filmed female family members showering from 2024 and shared images with other men, and investigations also found that he used AI to create fake nude images of female relatives. He shared some of the AI images with a male cousin, who was also involved in creating and distributing them. AI-generated nude images and secret recordings were found on another phone he had borrowed after his release on bail, and a family member made a further police report. One female relative said the incident left her depressed and unable to eat or sleep properly. The court barred the media from publishing information that could identify the victims, including the man’s name.
Core concern Medium reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 06/10/2026
11 Apr 2024United StatesFlock Safety license plate readers
On 11 April 2024 Toledo police officers stopped a pickup truck after a Flock license-plate camera alerted them to a stolen plate. According to the police report and body-camera footage reported by 13abc and ABC News, the camera had misread the plate, which was not stolen. Officers drew their guns, ordered the driver out and to the ground, and a K-9 handler released a police dog as he began to kneel. The driver told ABC News he was bitten seven times on his forearm and elbow, was traumatized and could not work; he was arrested and charged with obstruction, resisting arrest and, later, failure to comply. Prosecutors dropped all charges in August 2024. The department found the dog deployment within policy and reprimanded the officer who made the stop for failing to visually verify the plate against the reader's information. Business Insider reported in March 2026 that police records show the camera read a 7 on the plate as a 2, that the man lost feeling in his fingers, gave up his lawn-care business and forklift work, sold his truck and was evicted, and that he had sued the officer and the city and settled in October for $35,000.
Contextual tracker case High reported severity Lawsuit Settled
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 5 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 04/10/2026
15 Jan 2024 to 1 Feb 2024SpainUndress Up app (reported)
Diario de Pontevedra and Faro de Vigo reported on 1 October 2026 that the Audiencia Provincial de Pontevedra had upheld a juvenile-court judgment against three boys who, aged 15 in January 2024, used an AI undressing app to turn photos two female classmates had posted on Instagram into fake nude images. According to the ruling as reported, the images were made from 15 January 2024 and shown to other pupils in class and on a school trip on 1 February 2024, and they circulated among pupils for more than fifteen days. The Juzgado de Menores found the three responsible for two offences against moral integrity and imposed socio-educational tasks on each (two five-month measures according to Diario de Pontevedra, five months according to Faro de Vigo), plus €1,000 compensation to each girl for moral damage. The school had expelled them for 15, 21 and 30 days. The appeal ruling is final.
Core concern Medium reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 04/10/2026
2024IrelandUnidentified image tool
Gráinne Seoige, a broadcaster who stood for Fianna Fáil in Galway West in Ireland's 2024 general election, told RTÉ's Prime Time in January 2026 that people close to her alerted her during the campaign to sexualised images of her made with deepfake technology. She says the AI-generated pornographic image was disseminated through WhatsApp, shared hundreds if not thousands of times by her account, and that when gardaí sought its origin some recipients refused to cooperate, so the investigation hit a dead end. She kept silent during the campaign and has described the experience as deeply traumatising, with shame and humiliation lasting almost a year and a half. In a September 2026 interview relayed by RSVP Live from the Sunday Independent she described night terrors of faceless men tearing her clothes off and wearing a long puffer coat everywhere so her body could not be seen. She has since appeared before the Oireachtas media committee (Irish Independent, 21 January 2026), and made a Virgin Media documentary on deepfake abuse, scheduled for broadcast on 5 October 2026. In passages from it quoted by RSVP Live and the Irish Sun on 4 October 2026 she says she was shown the image in September or October 2024, that it made her not want to go outside, that she moved away from her home and that she has had therapy; she also says she believes the image was politically motivated. The Irish Times, reviewing the documentary on 5 October 2026, reports that in it she learns from a Dublin technology company that further images taken from her Instagram account have been manipulated with deepfake software, which was news to her. The tool used to make the image and the person who made it are not identified.
Core concern High reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 7 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 28/09/2026
1 Jul 2024 to 30 Sept 2025Event location unknownUnidentified voice-cloning tool
Kenjiro Tsuda, a Japanese voice actor known for roles in Jujutsu Kaisen, sued the operator of TikTok in the Tokyo District Court in November 2025, seeking removal of videos he says use a generative-AI imitation of his voice without permission. According to his complaint, as reported by Jiji Press, Nikkei and the Asahi Shimbun, an account run by an unidentified person posted at least 188 short videos on urban legends, the occult and trivia between July 2024 and September 2025, narrated in a voice modelled on his; the account had about 210,000 followers, videos averaged 1.47 million views, and his side says the poster earned 500,000 to 750,000 yen a month from TikTok's view-based payments. TikTok's operator said the voice was a generic male voice that the poster said came from AI trained on a friend's voice. The poster deleted the account in May 2026. On 30 September 2026 the court held, as a general principle, that a person's voice is a symbol of personality like a likeness and that using a performer's voice without permission solely to exploit its power to attract customers infringes the right of publicity, the first such ruling in Japan. It dismissed the claim because the videos were already gone and TikTok's operator had no remaining duty to delete them, and it did not decide whether these videos infringed his rights (Nikkei; Asahi Shimbun; TV Asahi). His lawyer said they did not plan to appeal.
Core concern Low reported severity Lawsuit Dismissed
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution disputed · 7 sources, 5 underlying accounts · Added 28/09/2026
14 Feb 2024United StatesFlock Safety license plate readers
According to a lawsuit filed on 29 June 2026 and reported by The Herald (Rock Hill), a York County sheriff's deputy stopped Steven Melvin, 42, on 14 February 2024 as he pulled into his apartment complex near Lake Wylie, after receiving a Flock license-plate-reader alert that a stolen dark-coloured BMW sedan was in the area. The deputy approached Melvin's black BMW with his gun drawn and aimed at him and made him kneel with his hands over his head for more than five minutes; after calling for backup and checking his information, the deputy determined the car was not stolen. The camera had read the first letter of his South Carolina tag incorrectly, matching a stolen BMW one letter off. A sheriff's internal-affairs review in November 2024 found the deputy's actions reasonable and blamed an illegally tinted plate cover, for which Melvin received a verbal warning; an email cited in the filing says the cameras had read his plate correctly 13 times that month. Melvin says the stop caused him trauma and emotional distress. The sheriff's office removed the case to federal court in August 2026 and denies violating his rights.
Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 28/09/2026
1 Oct 2024 to 28 Feb 2025AustraliaUnidentified image and video tool
William Hamish Yeates, then 18, of Netherby in Adelaide, created sexually explicit deepfake images and videos of a teenage girl with whom, his counsel said, he had developed an obsession, using her school graduation photograph, and shared them across multiple accounts on X between October 2024 and February 2025. Appearing in court in February 2026 charged with eight counts of creating or altering sexual material without consent and 12 counts of using a carriage service in a harassing or offensive way, he became the first person in Australia prosecuted under the Commonwealth offence introduced in 2024 against adult deepfake pornography; in April 2026 he pleaded guilty to two counts of creating or altering sexual material without consent (October 2024 to February 2025) and two of the carriage-service offence, and the remaining counts were withdrawn. At a pre-sentence hearing in the South Australian District Court on 22 September 2026 the victim, now 19, told the court that the first time she saw her actual graduation picture was on a pornography website beside altered videos of her with her full name and school attached, that she feels sick whenever she sees the photo, that the discovery led to the darkest period of her life, and that although the images were fake their impact was painfully real. Yeates read an apology; his counsel cited diagnoses of autism spectrum disorder and compulsive sexual behaviour disorder and asked for no custody; the Commonwealth prosecutor sought imprisonment. On 27 October 2026, according to AAP, Judge Anne Barnett sentenced him in the South Australian District Court to two years and three months' prison, suspended on condition that he enter a three-year, $500 good behaviour bond, and ordered him to pay the victim's medical expenses and forfeit a phone and laptop seized by police; the judge said the availability of AI tools had increased the capacity for offending and to cause substantial harm, and that the victim remains frightened the content will resurface.
Core concern High reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 5 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 23/09/2026
19 Mar 2024 to 19 Sept 2026NetherlandsUnidentified video tool
In March 2024 the newspaper AD revealed that a large number of Dutch women in public life, including artists, television presenters, Olympic athletes, current and former ministers, mayors and members of the royal family, appeared in manipulated pornographic videos on an online platform with 13 million monthly visitors, later identified as MrDeepFakes. Dozens of women filed police complaints and several spoke publicly: one presenter said she was preparing a complaint, a party leader said the video felt like 'digital rape', another presenter said she would file a complaint 'because tomorrow it could happen to young girls of sixteen', a presenter-entrepreneur did so 'to prevent new, young victims', and a member of parliament, told of a video by the House security service, went public rather than 'keep it small'. On 19 and 20 September 2026 AD, and the Public Prosecution Service (OM) confirming to NOS, reported that after more than a year of investigation the OM will prosecute a 74-year-old man from Noord-Holland, who is not in custody, for making the videos (Hart van Nederland, citing AD, says he is suspected of making and distributing them); images of about sixty well-known Dutch people and politicians were found on his devices, AD reported that he had been the platform's most active Dutch user, and he faces up to two years' imprisonment. The platform's Canadian operator, who removed material at the OM's request and blocked Dutch IP addresses before the site went offline, will not be prosecuted. One of the presenters reported to be among the depicted told AD she was relieved the case would go to court, having experienced the impact of such images herself. No hearing date has been set.
Core concern High reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 5 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 21/09/2026
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
Dec 2024 to Jun 2025United StatesUnidentified image and video tool
Between December 2024 and June 2025 James Strahler II, then 37, of Columbus (Upper Arlington), Ohio, harassed at least six women in central Ohio by phone, voicemail, text and web posts, sending them nude images that were both real and AI-generated, threatening rape, referring to their home addresses and demanding nude photos from their mothers. In one case he used AI to make pornographic videos depicting a victim with her father and sent them to her co-workers. He also posted AI-generated sexual images of boys from his community, morphing their faces onto other bodies. Prosecutors said he had installed more than 24 AI platforms and more than 100 web-based AI models on his phone. He pleaded guilty in April 2026 to cyberstalking, producing obscene visual representations of child sexual abuse and publication of digital forgeries, and on 8 September 2026 Chief U.S. District Judge Sarah D. Morrison sentenced him to 180 months in prison. The U.S. Attorney called it the first conviction in the nation under the 2025 Take It Down Act.
Core concern High reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 4 sources · Added 18/09/2026
Aug 2024South KoreaUnidentified image tool
On 16 September 2026 the Incheon District Court sentenced a teenage defendant to an indeterminate term of two years (maximum) to one year six months (minimum) under the Sexual Violence Punishment Act for making and distributing false sexual images, ordered a 40-hour treatment programme and a five-year ban on working with children, and took him into custody in court. As a middle-school student in Incheon in 2024 he had used AI deepfake technology to composite the faces of five teachers, including his homeroom teacher whom he tricked into sending photographs, and six female middle- and high-school students from his taekwondo academy onto nude images and videos, 35 productions in all, and distributed them in Telegram 'acquaintance humiliation' chat rooms with the victims' real names, ages, schools, subjects and, per two reports, phone numbers (Hankook Ilbo adds Instagram IDs on some). The teachers learned of the images only in January 2026; the court said they are receiving long-term psychological treatment. He had withdrawn from school a week before the teachers'-rights committee met, avoiding school discipline. The Incheon teachers' union called the sentence, below the prosecution's request, regrettable.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 5 sources · Added 16/09/2026
1 Aug 2024 to 1 Oct 2024United StatesFACES facial recognition
In August 2024, Robert Dillon, a 52-year-old self-employed commercial crabber from the Fort Myers area, was arrested at his San Carlos Park home on a third-degree felony warrant for the attempted luring of a child at a Jacksonville Beach McDonald's in November 2023 — a crime he had no part in. The warrant rested on a 93%-confidence result from FACES, the Face Analysis Comparison and Examination System maintained by the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office, run against low-resolution cell-phone photos of a surveillance screen, plus a restaurant employee's photo-lineup identification. Dillon spent a night in jail and bonded out against his truck's title; prosecutors dropped the charges in October 2024 after work-alibi evidence, but it took about a year to expunge the arrest and remove his mugshot. In June 2026 the ACLU filed a federal lawsuit (M.D. Fla.) against Jacksonville Beach, the Jacksonville sheriff and the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office, calling Dillon one of at least 14 known wrongful arrests from police reliance on facial recognition since 2019.
Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources · Added 15/09/2026