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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
31
Countries with reported events
11
Located 28 of 31 cases · 3 unknown
Languages in checked sources
12
Recorded for 31 of 31 cases

6 cases have no reviewed AI-to-person relation yet: 0 not yet reviewed and 6 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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31 of 741 published cases · page 2 of 2

4 Aug 2026United StatesGrok Imagine (reported)

Wisconsin: lawyers for congressional candidate Rebecca Cooke sent Rep. Derrick Van Orden a cease-and-desist letter on 30 September 2026 over AI-generated videos posted on his X account that show her making statements she never made; Wisconsin Public Radio reports the videos carry an automatic label indicating Grok Imagine

Rebecca Cooke, the Democratic challenger in Wisconsin's 3rd Congressional District, says Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden has repeatedly posted AI-generated videos to his X account that put words in her mouth. A cease-and-desist letter sent on her campaign's behalf on 30 September 2026 by Elias Law Group cites a video posted on 4 August 2026 that purports to show her speaking on the campaign trail in Eau Claire with former President Biden seated behind her and saying she seeks 'to take advantage of as much corruption as possible and give every illegal alien free healthcare'. The letter calls the video 'pure fiction', says she never made the statements, alleges the videos are posted to harm her reputation, and warns that her lawyers will evaluate all legal options. Wisconsin Public Radio reports that the videos posted to X carry an automatic label indicating they were made with Grok Imagine, and quotes two other AI-generated lines attributed to her. Van Orden's campaign accused Cooke of lying to voters about her record, and he answered the letter with another AI video of a duck saying 'Cease and desist!'.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 02/10/2026

2 Jan 2026Event location unknownGrok

UK: Grok-made sexualised images of a Welsh presenter and campaigner against deepfake abuse and of a commentator and broadcaster, requested by anonymous X accounts around New Year 2026; South Wales Police and the Metropolitan Police closed their investigations without identifying a suspect after X did not answer information requests; the presenter is in pre-action correspondence with xAI

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism and The Observer reported on 29 September 2026 that police investigations into sexualised images generated by X's chatbot Grok had failed to identify anyone. A Welsh presenter and campaigner against deepfake abuse, who had criticised Grok publicly on New Year's Eve 2025, saw an anonymous X user ask '@grok' to put her in a bikini made of cling film; Grok generated the image from her profile photo and posted it. She reported it to South Wales Police on 2 January 2026, was not asked for a statement until March, and was told officers had not heard back from X; the case was closed (in May, per The Observer) with the force saying no suspect could be identified. The same account also targeted a commentator and broadcaster, who estimates about 300 Grok images and videos of her were posted during the wave, including one alongside Jeffrey Epstein reported to the Metropolitan Police, which likewise said no suspect could be identified. The presenter is now in pre-action legal correspondence with xAI (part of SpaceXAI) alleging misuse of private information and breaches of data-protection law and the Equality Act; the company told her lawyers it had not been possible in the time available to look into its communications with South Wales Police. BBC Wales had reported in January 2026 that explicit images of the presenter were created with the chatbot and shared without her consent.

Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 30/09/2026

23 Feb 2026 to 25 Feb 2026ItalyUnidentified voice-cloning tool

Italy: Fideuram chairman Paolo Molesini is deceived by a WhatsApp impersonation of Intesa Sanpaolo's CEO and a phone call in the reportedly AI-cloned voice of a lawyer he knew into ordering about 95 million euros of transfers; at least 36 million remain missing and he resigned on 12 March 2026, weeks later

On 23 February 2026 Paolo Molesini, then chairman of Fideuram (the private-banking subsidiary of Intesa Sanpaolo), received a WhatsApp message from an unknown number from someone claiming to be Intesa's chief executive Carlo Messina, announcing a confidential acquisition that had to be executed through Fideuram. The same day a caller presenting as a lawyer of A&O Shearman whom Molesini knew, whose voice ANSA, Il Fatto Quotidiano and Corriere della Sera, reporting from the Milan court papers, describe as created with artificial intelligence (today.it, which also cites the seizure decree, writes that the court papers do not yet answer whether the voice was imitated), had him sign a confidentiality agreement and sent eleven payment instructions; Fideuram's treasury head was separately contacted by someone posing as Fideuram's CEO. Between 23 and 25 February eleven transfers totalling about 95 million euros went to accounts in Portugal and at Bank of China; the bank's alarm systems and the Milan prosecutors recovered about 40-42 million from China and 13 million seized in Portugal, leaving at least 36 million (39.5 million per the court papers) missing after conversion into cryptocurrency. Molesini, who Corriere writes is not under investigation, resigned as chairman on 12 March 2026, which Fideuram announced as being for personal reasons; a 48-year-old Israeli citizen is under investigation as a member of the gang.

Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 8 sources, 5 underlying accounts · Added 30/09/2026

24 Sept 2026 to 25 Sept 2026ItalyUnidentified image tool

Italian official condemns alleged AI sexualisation of her photograph in a political post

On the eve of the 27-28 September 2026 Chamber by-election in the Reggio Calabria constituency, Roberto Vannacci, leader of Futuro Nazionale, posted on Facebook a campaign image showing Matilde Siracusano, Undersecretary for Relations with Parliament and a Forza Italia deputy, seated at a table beside the centre-right candidate Fabio Roscioli and Senator Claudio Lotito. According to AGI and RaiNews, the white top Siracusano wears under her floral jacket in the original photograph (taken from her Instagram profile, per RaiNews) had disappeared and a much deeper neckline appeared in its place. The Calabrian blog Iacchite', to which Vannacci pointed, said it had published the image on 24 September, that it was not a real photograph but an image produced with artificial intelligence, and that the AI had reconstructed the neck and neckline area; Vannacci reposted it on 25 September without citing the source, according to the blog. Siracusano told Adnkronos that using AI to undress a woman in order to denigrate her was 'squalid'; RaiNews reports her calling it a crime and announcing her intention to file a criminal complaint (querela), while Adnkronos and ANSA say she was weighing one; she told la Repubblica that her lawyers would act. Vannacci replied that his accusers should 'look better' for whom to blame. Ministers and politicians across parties, including Forza Italia leader Antonio Tajani, condemned the post. No complaint filing, investigation or removal of the post is reported in the inspected sources.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 8 sources · Added 27/09/2026

Jul 2026South KoreaUnidentified image tool

Jeju: police refer a middle-school student over secretly filming teachers and making sexual deepfake composites; teachers dispute victim count and legal aid

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

19 Jun 2026 to 13 Aug 2026BrazilChatGPT and OpenAI moderation

Brazilian man detained without charge after OpenAI reported messages; he denies intending harm

BBC reporting describes a Brazilian man detained for 54 days after OpenAI reported messages to the FBI and Brazilian authorities. Police described a credible threat; he denied intending harm. A court released him without charges under protective conditions. The report did not include ChatGPT’s replies.

Core + contextual relations High reported severity Investigation Opened

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 23/09/2026

1 Jan 2026IndonesiaUnidentified image and video tool

Solo and Semarang, Indonesia: a university student's face was composited with AI onto pornographic images and a video by her ex-boyfriend and posted online; the suspect was detained after a nearly seven-month investigation

A female student at a state university in Solo (Surakarta), Central Java, learned on 1 January 2026 from friends that her face had been composited onto pornographic images and a video, which her lawyer said were found on Instagram and Telegram. Her family reported the case to the Central Java regional police cyber directorate on 28 January 2026. Police issued a formal police report on 31 July, arrested her ex-boyfriend, a university student in Semarang, at his boarding house in Gunungpati on 4 August 2026, and detained him. The police spokesman said the suspect used AI to place the complainant's face on another woman's naked body so that she appeared in pornographic content, uploaded it to his X account, did not sell it, and acted out of resentment after an on-and-off relationship ended. He faces charges under Articles 51 and 35 of the Electronic Information and Transactions Law and an article printed by two outlets as 'Law No. 1 of 2026', with a maximum of 12 years' imprisonment. Her lawyer said she could not sleep, withdrew, felt shame and at one point lost hope, that his team had found seven women in total allegedly targeted of whom six had not reported, and that the suspect's parents asked for an out-of-court settlement; police said only one complainant was confirmed.

Core concern High reported severity Investigation Opened

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 6 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 20/09/2026

May 2026SingaporeUnidentified video tool

Singapore: a businessman lost at least S$4.9 million after a deepfake Zoom 'briefing' with fabricated Prime Minister Lawrence Wong and other officials asked him for 'urgent funding assistance'

In May 2026 the Singapore Police Force (SPF) reported that a man had lost at least S$4.9 million (about US$3.8 million) to a government-official impersonation scam. He received a WhatsApp message carrying the profile photo of Secretary to the Cabinet Wong Hong Kuan and an email from a proton.me address in that name, requesting urgent funding assistance for 'the situation in the Strait of Hormuz', with a fake 'letter of guarantee' bearing the Prime Minister's signature promising reimbursement within 15 business days; he signed a non-disclosure agreement and supplied a copy of his identity card. He was then invited to a Zoom video conference in which Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, President Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Minister Indranee Rajah, Monetary Authority of Singapore representatives and foreign officials appeared; all were fabricated with deepfake AI, and the closing 'remarks' by the fake Prime Minister acknowledged the victim's attendance. Contacted afterwards on WhatsApp by a scammer posing as a lawyer, he transferred the money in a series of transactions to a corporate bank account, and realised the fraud only when he contacted the real cabinet secretary. On 16 May the police released footage of the fake conference, noting lips out of sync with speech, audio broadcast from a single account and a distorted background.

Core concern High reported severity Investigation Opened

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 18/09/2026

26 Aug 2026 to 28 Aug 2026SpainUnidentified Google AI tool (reported)

Argentine activist reports threats after an alleged Google AI misidentification

On 26 August 2026, WhatsApp groups in Ceuta circulated videos and images claiming that Argentine political scientist and activist Flavia Broffoni — who was in Patagonia and had not been to Spain since 2014 — was a woman filmed in Ceuta allegedly giving pepper spray to Moroccan migrants. A screenshot from one group shows that a user cropped the woman's face from the video and asked a Google AI tool who she was, with the word 'activista' as context; the answer identified her as Flavia Broffoni with details of her public profile. Broffoni received death and rape threats. La Nación's own test with the same video produced a different false identification — a student from Quilmes, with her personal data. Google Argentina said it could not confirm the screenshot came from its systems without the original link and had received no formal report. Broffoni is weighing legal action with her lawyer.

Contextual tracker case High reported severity Media Coverage

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

12 Mar 2026 to 25 Aug 2026United KingdomUnidentified AI tool

SDT strikes solicitor Abhishek Kumar off the Register of Foreign Lawyers after AI-generated false citations in his SRA defence

On 25 August 2026 the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal struck Abhishek Kumar off the Register of Foreign Lawyers after finding proved that his 12 March 2026 Answer to the SRA's Rule 12 Statement contained misleading quotations and citations produced with generative AI — including a non-existent 'SRA v Chan [2020] EWHC 1502' and a miscited 'SRA v James, MacGregor & Naylor [2018] EWCA Civ 1420' that is actually an intellectual-property case — and that his 9 April 2026 email admitting AI use was itself AI-drafted with further errors. The tribunal said it would have struck him off on that allegation alone; the parallel ground was his January 2024 conviction under s.21 of the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006. This is the SDT's first case on a lawyer's use of AI, per the SRA's counsel.

Core concern High reported severity Regulatory Action

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 5 sources · Added 15/09/2026

11 Aug 2026United StatesChatGPT (reported)

Massachusetts prosecutors cite a teenager’s ChatGPT prompts in a family homicide case

Two family members were killed in Massachusetts on 11 August 2026. Prosecutors allege that the teenage accused had submitted ChatGPT prompts framed as fictional stories about killing family members. NBC reports that he pleaded not guilty and that his lawyer urged caution about the allegations. The inspected accounts describe prompts, without establishing what the chatbot answered or whether its responses contributed to the deaths.

Core concern Critical reported severity Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 14/08/2026

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: 18/10/2026. Dataset available under CC BY 4.0.