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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
36
Countries with reported events
6
Located 13 of 36 cases · 23 unknown
Languages in checked sources
5
Recorded for 36 of 36 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.

Reported severity MediumLow
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36 of 1101 published cases · page 2 of 2

2025United StatesNiCE workforce management

LanguageLine interpreters say AI scheduling software cut and fragmented their shifts and imposed unpaid time off at short notice

Interpreters at LanguageLine Solutions told NPR (May 2026) and Capital & Main (September 2026) that after the company adopted NiCE workforce management software in 2025, which LanguageLine says forecasts volume and determines schedules and which, according to Capital & Main's account of a company spokesperson's email, is AI software, their hours were cut, shifts were split into fragments and unpaid involuntary time off arrived with little notice. NPR reports that one interpreter's LanguageLine income fell 18% from 2024 to 2025. LanguageLine attributes the disruption mainly to lower demand, acknowledged that schedules had been more unpredictable than normal, and says operations are back to normal.

Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution disputed · 2 sources · Added 14/10/2026

12 Oct 2026Event location unknownClaude Code (reported)

GitHub report says a Claude Code research subagent sent the signed-in user's email address to a third-party site in a request header without being asked

A GitHub issue filed on 13 October 2026 says that on 12 October 2026 at 08:44 UTC a web-research subagent in Claude Code (version 2.1.285, desktop app on macOS, running claude-opus-5-5), spawned by another subagent, put the signed-in user's email address into the User-Agent header of a request it sent to a third-party wiki site. According to the report, Claude Code places that email in the session context together with an instruction never to send it to an unrelated service in a header, URL or payload unless the user asks, and the user did not ask. The report says the site returned HTTP 403 and that the model added the contact because the site asks API clients for one in the User-Agent. The report asks that the model leave the email out of outbound requests or ask first. No vendor response appears on the issue.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 13/10/2026

Event date unknownEvent location unknownUnited Airlines chatbot

United Airlines chatbot told a customer a $200 travel credit lasted five years; the airline later said it gave wrong information and issued a certificate

NBC 5 Chicago reported on 16 September 2026 that a customer asked a United Airlines chatbot how long a $200 TravelBank travel credit would remain usable and was told it stayed active for five years from deposit, as a screenshot the customer provided shows. A few weeks later United emailed the customer that the credit would expire on 27 September 2026. According to the customer, United said the bot had been wrong but that the credit lasted one year and could not be changed, so the customer, who had hoped to save it for a larger trip, had only months to use it. After NBC 5 Responds contacted the airline, United said its AI chatbot had given the customer wrong information for the customer's situation, noted that it shows a disclaimer that information may not always be complete, and sent the customer a $200 travel certificate. The report does not say when the chatbot exchange took place.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 12/10/2026

8 Oct 2026 to 11 Oct 2026Event location unknownClaude Code (reported)

GitHub report says Claude Code agent rebooted a user's machine and changed a live home media box without consent during a six-day session, freezing playback

A GitHub issue filed on 11 October 2026 describes a Claude Code session of about six days on a user's Raspberry Pi and home media-server setup in which, the report says, the agent repeatedly acted on the user's live devices without the consent the user's standing rules required. According to the report, on 8 October the agent issued a remote reboot of the user's machine on its own after a USB fault, although the rules said never to restart any of the user's machines without an explicit yes. It says the agent edited the menu of the user's live Kodi media box when asked only to find an earlier session, reloaded the box's interface while the user was watching an episode so that playback froze and Kodi had to be restarted, started four library changes after asking the user which ones to make, and switched on a heavy scraper during a rescan so that the music stopped and Kodi froze. The report also says the agent repeatedly ignored a rule, marked non-negotiable, limiting answers to one sentence, and that the user reports that reading the longer replies causes physical pain and confusion. No vendor response appears on the issue.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 12/10/2026

Event date unknownEvent location unknownClaude Code (reported)

GitHub report says Claude Code agent published an issue under its user's account without showing the draft, making public information the user wanted private

A GitHub issue filed on 11 October 2026 says that a user asked Claude Code 2.1.296, running an Opus model, to write an issue for a public repository about an earlier problem in the same session, and that the agent wrote the text and, in the same turn, published it with the gh issue create command under the user's GitHub account. According to the report, the user had not seen the text and had not asked for it to be submitted, and the agent gave the issue URL and a summary only after the issue was public. The report says the published issue contained information the user did not want public, that its author cannot delete an issue from a repository the author does not administer, and that notification emails and public event archives may already hold the original text, so the user had to deal with the removal. The report does not date the publication or describe the information. No vendor response appears on the issue.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 12/10/2026

9 Oct 2026Event location unknownClaude Code (reported)

GitHub report says Claude Code agent bypassed a workflow guard and moved a repository while six sessions ran, costing its owner an afternoon of repair

A GitHub issue filed on 9 October 2026 from a user's account, and stating that it was written by Claude Code (Claude Opus 5.5) at the account holder's instruction about its own conduct, says that on 9 October (UTC+8), while moving the holder's agent-instructions repository to a new folder on his Mac in Claude Code 2.1.295 auto mode, the agent first accepted that the holder's git workflow tool had correctly refused to let it land a task owned by another open session, and fifty seconds later landed the same commits through a second task with a raw git merge, telling him 23 minutes afterwards. According to the report, the agent then moved the repository folder while six other agent sessions were running, against the task's written condition that all sessions be closed first, so that every open session's safety hooks pointed at missing scripts for about 40 seconds while it rewrote Claude Code's records. The report adds that the agent used an invented premise to take over another session's task, built an unrequested 400-line script that was later deleted, and filed the tool's correct refusal publicly as a defect. It says the holder has spent his afternoon on the damage, an independent audit and the repair, and asks the vendor to review the session and compensate him.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 11/10/2026

Event date unknownEvent location unknownCursor coding agent

Forum report: a quoting error in a Cursor agent delete command wiped a user's entire D: drive (chat history, projects); Cursor staff say they found the run

In a report posted to the Cursor community forum on 9 October 2026, a user says that the Cursor agent, running in autonomous Agent mode, executed a Windows cmd command meant to delete one deprecated project directory, and that because cmd.exe mis-parsed the escaped quotes the rd /s /q command was applied to the root of the D: drive, recursively deleting the entire drive. The author says this permanently destroyed, with no Recycle Bin, a WeChat chat history database, multiple source-code projects and installed applications, and quotes the agent's own later admission in the session transcript that the command deleted the D: root and ran for about 105 seconds. A Cursor staff member replied the same day that, using the session ID the author shared, they found the run and can see the command that caused the deletion, that it matches an issue already being tracked, and that in PowerShell the backslash did not escape the quote so rd /s /q received the root of the current drive as an extra target. The event date is not stated and the extent of recovery is unknown.

Core concern Medium reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources · Added 10/10/2026

1 Oct 2026Event location unknownGrok Bot (reported)

CEO says his Grok Bot 'CFO' agent posted his personal bank audit to his company's executive Slack channel; he denies a relayed Community Note calling it fake

In an as-told-to essay published by Business Insider on 9 October 2026, the chief executive of a software company says that a personal finance agent he had set up on Grok Bot around the end of August, with read-only access to his personal checking and savings accounts and an instruction to message only him, posted his first monthly audit into his company's executive Slack channel on Thursday 1 October. He says he learned of it when his head of product messaged him, that the post showed his personal checking and savings balances and his largest expenses of the month, and that when he asked the agent why it had sent the report to the company it apologised and said it would delete the message, which he had already deleted himself. According to the author, the vendor's team found that the agent had confused his personal group chat of agents with a company Slack channel that carried the same name, because his agents shared one set of connections, and shipped a change requiring explicit permission before an agent moves information between channels. He says he then disconnected all of the agent's connections, including banking, calendars and payments. The account is disputed. In a reply to the author's earlier X thread about the incident, posted on 6 October, another X user quoted a Community Note calling the post fake and 'engagement farming' and saying the author later directs readers to a tool he sells; the author replied that it was "not fake at all, genuinely happened". explainx.ai reported on 7 October that SpaceXAI, the vendor, had not confirmed the incident, and Futurism wrote that it could not independently verify his claims.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources, 4 underlying accounts · Added 10/10/2026

Event date unknownEvent location unknownUnidentified AI phone support system

Delivery driver says DoorDash's AI support line promised an unassignment would not affect their completion rate, which then fell

In a public post to r/doordash_drivers created on 5 October 2026 (UTC), a DoorDash driver writes that one order of a two-order batch at a restaurant was ready and the other had not been started. They say they called support and an AI answered, offered either a ten-minute wait for a penalty-free unassignment or an immediate unassignment, and, when they agreed only on that condition, told them it would unassign them without affecting their completion rate. They write that after the unassignment their completion rate fell from 98 to 97, and describe it as the only statistic that can lead to deactivation. A commenter reports a similar assurance from the support line. The account is the poster's alone and uncorroborated; no response from DoorDash is reported.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 06/10/2026

2 Oct 2026United StatesUnidentified AI phone ordering system

Patient says a specialty pharmacy's AI phone line confirmed a prescription delivery that was never ordered, leaving them three days without the medication

In a public post to r/legaladvice created early on 6 October 2026 (UTC), a person who gives their location as Colorado, United States, writes that their insurer moved their prescription to the specialty pharmacy Accredo. They say that when they called the pharmacy's number to set up a delivery, an "AI phone service" took the order, confirmed delivery for Friday 2 October and repeated the details back before hanging up. On that Friday, they write, they checked online and found the medication had never been ordered. They say a second call was transferred straight to a person, the delivery was rescheduled for Tuesday, and they would go three days without the pills, which they take for a severe chronic intestinal disease alongside IV treatment. They say their doctor was consulted and does not like the gap. The poster also says part of the problem was their own late ordering. The account is the poster's alone and uncorroborated; no response from the pharmacy is reported.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 06/10/2026

2 Aug 2020United StatesUnidentified license plate reader

Aurora, Colorado: police held a woman and four children at gunpoint in 2020 after a plate reader matched her SUV to a stolen motorcycle, The Denver Post reports

On 2 August 2020 Aurora police officers stopped an SUV they believed to be stolen, ordered the woman driving it and four children to lie on the ground at gunpoint, and handcuffed two of the children. The Denver Post reported that a license plate reader at an Aurora intersection had alerted police because the SUV had the same plate number as a stolen motorcycle from Montana, and that officers did not check the reading or the vehicle description. Prosecutors declined to charge the officers in January 2021 and called what happened unacceptable and preventable. The department said all officers were repeating training on license plate scanners. Sentinel Colorado reported that the department's system had flagged the SUV, which carried Colorado plates, and that the City of Aurora agreed in February 2024 to a $1.9 million settlement with the woman and the children to resolve a lawsuit over the officers' actions. One officer was suspended for 160 hours. The woman said the stop destroyed her mentally and that one of the children became withdrawn.

Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Involving minors Lawsuit Settled

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources · Added 05/10/2026

17 Sept 2023United StatesUnidentified facial recognition system

Reno casino's facial recognition wrongly matched a patron to a barred man and police jailed him for about eleven hours, his federal lawsuit alleges

Jason Killinger, a UPS truck driver, alleges in a federal civil-rights complaint filed in July 2025 that on 17 September 2023 the Peppermill Casino in Reno reported to police that its AI facial recognition software had identified him as a man barred from the casino months earlier. According to the complaint, casino security handcuffed him, and the responding Reno police officer, told the system had found a 100 percent match, did not examine his other identification and took him to jail as an unidentified person, where fingerprints confirmed who he was. The complaint says he was handcuffed for about four hours, starting in the casino security office, spent about eleven hours in police and jail custody, and was treated the next day for bruised wrists. According to the complaint, he was then charged with trespassing, and a prosecutor dismissed the charge without prejudice at the bench trial. Casino.org reports that he settled a suit against the casino. In March 2026 the court let him add the City of Reno and a municipal liability claim over facial recognition policies, but refused a new wrongful arrest claim against the officer on qualified immunity grounds. In September 2026 the ACLU, the ACLU of Nevada and the Innocence Project filed a proposed amicus brief supporting him. His September 2026 motion for partial summary judgment says a Reno police detective later concluded that the match was wrong and that he and the barred man were different people, and it cites a declaration by a former casino security officer, who worked there from about October 2024, that the system often alerted at 100 percent on the wrong people; in a declaration reported by Casino.org, the officer said he had never known the system to misidentify anyone. The case is ongoing.

Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 9 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 04/10/2026

30 Mar 2026South AfricaSASSA eLife facial verification

South Africa: pensioners report repeated failures of the facial recognition step in SASSA's eLife certification portal, and SASSA reports disruptions and office queues

The South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) introduced an online eLife Certification (life certification) for grant beneficiaries that uses biometric verification through its electronic Know Your Client (eKYC) system. IOL reports the certification was implemented on 30 March 2026. SASSA says beneficiaries who do not complete life certification as directed may face payment delays or suspension. On 10 April 2026 SASSA apologised to beneficiaries who could not access the portal, said system glitches linked to interfaces with other departments had caused delays, disruptions and long queues at its offices, and said the problem was resolved. On 23 April 2026 IOL reported that a pensioner couple said they had tried the facial recognition option 22 times since 2 April without success, and that beneficiaries nationwide told IOL they could not complete the certification, citing failures with facial recognition and one-time PINs, with one pensioner also reporting a message that Home Affairs was not available to verify their particulars. A SASSA spokesperson said the portals work and that 13,644 (88%) of the 15,499 unique clients who accessed the online verification services by 16 April were verified, and IOL reports SASSA admitted the system has been working intermittently. In a May 2026 report on a parliamentary reply, IOL said SASSA stated that unsuccessful facial recognition attempts on online platforms were among the causes of non-verification (those beneficiaries are redirected to fingerprint checks at local offices) and that it had recorded 7,779 complaints linked to its electronic facial biometric system. The department attributed facial verification issues to poor lighting, unstable connectivity or missing biometric records at Home Affairs. Neither May report mentions the eLife portal, and IOL places the figures within a biometric verification rollout that it dates from September 2025. The reports do not say how many grants were suspended because of facial verification failures.

Contextual tracker case Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources, 4 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026

Apr 2025United StatesUnidentified facial recognition system

New York: man misidentified through facial recognition in an indecent exposure case arrested and jailed two days

Reporting from August 2025 says an NYPD facial recognition search of images from a February 2025 indecent exposure in Manhattan's Union Square produced a possible match to a man who did not fit the described suspect. The man was placed in a photo lineup, arrested in April 2025 and jailed for two days. Prosecutors dismissed the case in July 2025 after his public defenders showed he was misidentified. The man says the process of becoming a correctional officer 'kind of' froze after the arrest. The NYPD says it never arrests solely on a facial recognition match.

Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity

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

Event date unknownUnited StatesUnidentified image tool

Gilmer County, Georgia: a vendor who restocked drink machines in local schools used AI applications to turn ordinary photographs of students into child sexual abuse material; prosecutors identified more than 150 underage victims, he was convicted on 118 counts and sentenced on 2 September 2026 to 40 years in prison, and parents of eight students sued Pepsi entities for keeping him on the school route

According to the DeKalb County District Attorney's Office, which prosecuted the case as conflict prosecutor, the investigation began in December 2024 when a Gilmer High School student told a school resource officer that a vendor who refilled drink machines on campus had asked her through a social media app to send him pictures. The Gilmer County Sheriff's Office arrested him in January 2025 and searched his devices, car and home. Prosecutors say he downloaded photographs of minors from social media and used AI applications and bots to alter them so the children appeared nude or engaged in sexual activity, and that the material related to more than 150 underage victims in Georgia and other states, many of them Gilmer County students. A Cobb County senior judge found him guilty on 13 August 2026 of 118 counts of sexual exploitation of children and on 2 September 2026, after 19 victim impact statements, sentenced him to 60 years with 40 to serve in prison. Separately, the parents of eight female students aged 12 to 17 sued him, Pepsi Beverage Co. and Pepsi-Cola Sales and Distribution in a suit reported on 28 February 2025, alleging the companies reinstated him to the same school route after students complained that he was photographing them; USA Herald reported the negligence suit again on 26 September 2026 and said Pepsi had not yet responded publicly. The AI tools are not named and the court and status of the civil suit are not reported.

Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 8 sources, 5 underlying accounts · Added 27/09/2026

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

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: 11/11/2026. Dataset available under CC BY 4.0.