May 2023ItalyUnidentified image tool
A graphic designer hired in March 2022 by a cybersecurity company was dismissed in May 2023 for a justified objective reason, which the company gave as an internal reorganisation and the suppression of her post to contain costs during an economic crisis. She challenged the dismissal, arguing that the reorganisation was a pretext and that her tasks had been redistributed to other workers, not eliminated. According to legal press reports of the judgment, the company said the graphic-design tasks were first absorbed by other staff and the residual work was then done partly with the support of artificial-intelligence tools, which the marketing manager used to produce graphics of adequate quality at lower cost and in less time. The labour section of the Tribunale di Roma (judgment no. 9135 of 19 November 2025) found a real crisis and reorganisation, no possibility of redeploying her, and upheld the dismissal. The reports say the court treated AI as one of the tools the company used to make its structure more efficient, not as an autonomous cause of the dismissal; a commentary in Giustizia Insieme calls the publicity around a first dismissal caused by AI out of proportion to the ruling. The judgment itself was not read, and whether it was appealed is not reported.
AI relation unknown Medium reported severity Lawsuit Dismissed
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution disputed · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 24/10/2026
2023Event location unknownUnidentified generative AI tools
Fortune reported on 17 August 2025 that Eric Vaughan, chief executive of the enterprise-software company IgniteTech, replaced nearly 80% of the company's staff within a year after deciding in early 2023 that generative AI was an existential transformation, according to headcount figures Fortune reviewed. Vaughan told Fortune that over 2023 and into early 2024 the company replaced hundreds of employees, declining to give a number. He said staff were required to work only on AI projects every Monday and that 20% of payroll went to AI learning, and that employees who flatly refused were let go ('we said goodbye to those people'); technical staff were the most resistant, raising concerns about what the AI could not do. He said it was extremely difficult and not something he recommends, but that he would do it again. The account is the employer's; no dismissed employee is quoted.
AI relation unknown Medium reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 24/10/2026
Aug 2024 to Oct 2024PolandUnidentified voice and image tool
Radio Kraków, a regional public broadcaster in Poland, ended the cooperation contracts of the freelance collaborators who hosted programmes on its OFF Radio Kraków channel at the end of August 2024. On 22 October 2024 the channel relaunched in a format based on artificial intelligence, with three presenters whose voices and faces were made with an AI program, and soon aired an AI-generated "interview" with the poet Wisława Szymborska, who died in 2012. A former host told OKO.press that eight collaborators, himself included, lost their work; former hosts started a petition against the "experiment" and, according to Notes from Poland, said they had been let go to make way for the AI plans. The station's liquidator and editor-in-chief said no employee was dismissed, that the contracts with external collaborators ended for reasons other than AI, chiefly near-zero audience figures, and that the station never intended to replace people with machines. After a backlash the station ended the AI channel on 28 October 2024, less than a week after launch. Whether the contracts ended because of the AI plan is disputed.
AI relation unknown Medium reported severity Internal Action
AI involvement disputed · Causal attribution disputed · 2 sources · Added 24/10/2026
11 Mar 2026Event location unknownUnidentified OpenAI model (reported)
A Head of Customer Service Platform at Apertum Online Ltd, a consumer internet company whose customer-service system passed customer request forms to a large language model, was dismissed on 11 March 2026 during his probation, two months after starting. According to an employment tribunal decision of 23 April 2026, he had told his manager in February that customers' personal data was being sent to OpenAI within support tickets and set out his concerns in a document; the chief technical officer called the document pure AI slop in a chat and said he would fire him. The employer says it dismissed him for underperformance, citing his reliance on AI to generate documents; he says he was dismissed for his disclosures. The judge refused interim relief, finding he had not shown a pretty good chance of success on the reason for dismissal while noting a significant coincidence in timing. No findings of fact were made, and the claim awaits a final hearing.
AI relation unknown Medium reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution disputed · 1 source · Added 22/10/2026
20 Oct 2026BrazilUnidentified document-analysis tool
On 20 October 2026 the First Panel of Brazil's Superior Court of Justice (STJ) ordered the lawyers acting in a special appeal (AREsp 3.095.458) to pay a fine of 20,000 reais for an act against the dignity of justice, after the court's case-processing office certified that the petition carried hidden text layers with commands addressed to automated AI processing, such as an instruction to draft a firm conclusion that the appeal should be admitted and granted. The panel also ordered a technical report on the concealment techniques and the communication of the case to the Brazilian bar (OAB) and the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office. One of the lawyers said the text was probably residue of content produced by an AI tool used to draft the petition and denied any intent to interfere. The court said the commands did not influence the outcome; the appeal was not admitted.
AI relation unknown Low reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution established · 2 sources · Added 22/10/2026
Event date unknownUnited KingdomUnidentified AI system
In a public post to r/LegalAdviceUK created on 16 October 2026, a worker at a small UK business writes that about three weeks earlier the owner began a redundancy consultation with HR input and told them they were the only person being considered for redundancy. At the first formal consultation they were told of a proposed alternative role with a pay increase. At the second consultation, held with the HR adviser, the poster said they wanted that role and were told it was no longer considered viable and that the work would instead be completed by AI. After a colleague in the two-person department resigned, the owner said the department would be removed entirely; the poster says the company is now advertising a junior role with a similar title whose duties include assisting AI tools. The poster says they are frightened of losing their income, feel forced out so the owner can hire cheaper labour, and have contacted Acas. Commenters say this may be a lawful redundancy. The account is the poster's alone; the employer is not identified and no employer statement was retrieved. No dismissal had taken effect at the time of the post.
AI relation unknown Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 20/10/2026
2025RussiaDeepSeek
A Moscow district court upheld an engineering company's dismissal of its head of sales for disclosing trade secrets, according to RAPSI and Pravo.ru reports of 27 July 2026. The grounds included uploading protected internal reports to the Chinese chatbot DeepSeek, forwarding company documents to her personal email and disclosing strategic information to a supplier. The court held that uploading trade secrets to DeepSeek is in itself a disclosure. She had sought a dismissal by mutual agreement and a contractual severance payment of 5 million roubles. The court rejected both, annulled a separate reprimand and awarded her compensation for moral harm. The decision was not yet final.
AI relation unknown Medium reported severity Lawsuit Dismissed
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 19/10/2026
14 Jul 2026ChinaUnidentified image tool
China Daily reported on 15 July 2026 that the first prize in a local photography competition in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, had been revoked after the image was found to be AI-generated. Online users had pointed to garbled characters on the workers' vests, unnatural sunlight and matching faces in the winning photo of three sanitation workers. After an investigation, the city's federation of literary and art circles, one of the organisers, confirmed in a notice on Tuesday 14 July that the photo had been created using AI, cancelled its award and barred the work from competitions, evaluations, exhibitions and official archives. The competition was suspended for rectification; the notice said those responsible would be dealt with under the relevant rules and that the case exposed lax vetting and imprecise judging criteria. The entrant is not named, and who generated the image is not stated.
AI relation unknown Low reported severity Internal Action
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 19/10/2026
2026Event location unknownUnidentified AI system
In a first-person essay published by the Oakland Review of Books on 2 October 2026, a former customer success manager at an education technology company writes that the company began a push at the end of 2025 to become 'AI-first', requiring staff to use AI tools, and that the author was later laid off. The author writes that an hour after the layoff the CEO held a seven-minute all-hands meeting to read a Claude-generated script saying leadership was 'replacing these roles with AI', and that the company let 40 people go, about 20 percent of its workforce, at the end of about six months of role eliminations. Staff who could not attend the HR meeting were told by email that their roles ended the next business day. The author also writes that sales were down and customers were unhappy, and that losing the job brought more relief than anything else, cushioned by savings and an employed partner. The company is not named, and the layoff is not dated beyond the essay's sequence. The account is uncorroborated.
AI relation unknown Medium reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 19/10/2026
2026Event location unknownUnidentified AI model
Times of Malta reported on 18 October 2026, from interviews with anonymous former gambling-sector employees, that iGaming companies are laying off staff as they turn to AI. One former designer, who says they lost their job earlier in 2026, says their team had been told to train an AI model to make design and brand-guideline decisions, presented as a tool to help designers, and that the company later decided the model was fit enough to replace around half of the design team, including those who trained it. The designer says there was no notice, that they were asked to resign later that day and that the severance was the bare minimum. The outlet omitted company names, and the workers said they had signed non-disclosure agreements. GamingMalta, the industry promotion foundation, told the outlet it sees talent being redeployed rather than replaced by AI, and the article notes that others pointed to search-engine changes and higher UK gambling taxes. The account is a single anonymous worker's, relayed by one outlet; the employer and where the job was based are not stated.
AI relation unknown Medium reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 19/10/2026
Aug 2026United StatesUnidentified document-analysis tool
In a memorandum of decision issued in early August 2026, a Connecticut Superior Court judge found that a motion for default and a notice filed on 24 July 2026 by a self-represented plaintiff, in a suit against a healthcare provider over access to records, carried text in tiny white type that was invisible to a human reader but legible to software. The concealed text told any AI model reviewing the filing to make its output agree with the filing and to work toward reversing the Chief Clerk's denial of his default request. After the court gave notice of a sanctions hearing, he hid further messages in later filings, which he said were jokes. The court treated the first instruction as a prompt injection, did not believe his explanation that he was auditing the court's use of AI, and rescinded his ability to file electronically, so that future filings must be made on paper at the clerk's office; Ars Technica reports that no monetary penalty was imposed. The court said the Connecticut Judicial Branch does not use AI to review or decide filings and that the motion was denied on its merits from a printed copy, so the hidden text affected no ruling. The plaintiff told Reuters, according to Ars Technica, that his intent was to audit the court.
AI relation unknown Low reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution established · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 18/10/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownUnidentified AI system
In a public post to r/cscareerquestions created on 17 October 2026, a person who says they joined a product company as an associate full-stack developer at the start of the year writes that, while still on probation, they were invited to a Microsoft Teams meeting 'regarding my employment' at which 17 staff were told that their roles were redundant because of AI and that they were no longer needed. The poster says they were writing the probation report due on the 23rd when it happened, that there was no prior hint, and that they feel upset, demotivated and frustrated. In replies the poster agrees with a commenter who suggests that AI was a cover for financial problems, and writes that the reasons given for sackings are not usually the real ones. The employer, its location and the date of the meeting are not stated, and the poster says they are not in the United States. The account is the poster's alone and uncorroborated; no employer statement was retrieved.
AI relation unknown Medium reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 18/10/2026
30 Apr 2026South AfricaUnidentified AI writing tool
South Africa's Department of Home Affairs announced on 30 April 2026 that it was suspending two senior officials with immediate effect after apparent AI hallucinations were found among the references appended to its recently Cabinet-approved Revised White Paper on Citizenship, Immigration and Refugee Protection. A chief director was placed on precautionary suspension that afternoon, and a director involved in the drafting was to be suspended the following Monday. The department said its initial review indicated that the references were generated and attached to the document after the fact, since they are not cited in its body; it withdrew the reference list pending an independent probe into how the hallucinations were added. It appointed two independent law firms, one to manage the disciplinary process and one to review all policy documents the department has produced since 30 November 2022, and said it would introduce AI checks and declarations in its approval process. The department apologised and said the body of the White Paper is not materially affected. Who used the AI tool, and which tool, is not stated.
AI relation unknown Low reported severity Internal Action
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 17/10/2026
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
May 2026BrazilGalileu
In May 2026 a judge of the 3rd Labour Court of Parauapebas, in the Brazilian state of Pará, fined two lawyers about R$84,000 after text in white font on a white background was found in a document they filed for a worker in a labour claim. According to the sentence as reported by G1, the hidden text was detected while the judgment was being drafted with Galileu, a generative AI tool the labour courts use to help judges and staff draft sentences, and its evident intention was to make the AI produce a superficial defence or a compromised draft judgment. The judge called the technique prompt injection. The lawyers said they disagreed with the decision and that there was never any command to manipulate the judge's decision, describing the text as an attempt to protect their client from the AI; one of them said she did not work on labour cases. In October 2026 the regional labour court announced that a Connecticut Superior Court judge had cited the decision when sanctioning a litigant for misuse of AI.
AI relation unknown Medium reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution disputed · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 16/10/2026
11 Dec 2025NetherlandsUnidentified AI writing tool (suspected)
On 11 December 2025 an examination board at Maastricht University found that a European Law School student had committed fraud in a weekly assignment whose purpose was to find and correctly cite legal sources. The board said three of the four sources contained wrong journals, years, titles and page numbers, that the sources did not exist, and that the way they were included pointed to the use of AI; it concluded the student had made unauthorised use of AI. The sanction was a formal warning in the student's file, invalidation of all assessment components of the course and exclusion from the resit. The student argued that no technical analysis or AI-detection tool had been used, that she was never asked whether she had used AI, and that the errors came from completing the work in a hurry from memory and notes with a poor internet connection. The university's examination appeals board rejected her appeal on 5 March 2026, and on 12 August 2026 the Administrative Jurisdiction Division of the Council of State dismissed her further appeal and her claim for damages for reputational and psychological harm.
AI relation unknown Low reported severity Lawsuit Dismissed
AI involvement suspected · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 16/10/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownChatGPT (reported)
In a public post to r/ChatGPT on 15 October 2026, a web developer and designer who builds and maintains websites and web apps for clients writes that they had just lost their best-paying client. The poster says the client, tired of paying for their services, made a full website and webshop with ChatGPT in what the client called a couple of hours, and then emailed to say the poster was no longer needed. In replies the poster says the new site was already live on a new server with the domain connected, that the shop had been reverse engineered without the client asking for the source code, and that in the poster's view the replacement is full of bugs. The poster says they understand the client wanting to save money. The client is not named and no statement from the client is available; the account is the poster's alone and uncorroborated.
AI relation unknown Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 16/10/2026
Jan 2025ChinaUnidentified AI quality-inspection tool
A technology company in Hangzhou, China, employed a worker to check the quality of answers produced by an AI large language model, at 25,000 yuan a month. In January 2025, citing the impact of AI technology on his project, it proposed moving him to an ordinary operations post at 15,000 yuan a month; when he did not agree, it notified him that his contract was terminated, according to a typical case released by the Hangzhou Intermediate People's Court on 28 April 2026 and reported by Hangzhou media and China National Radio. China National Radio, citing CCTV News, reports that the company told him only at arbitration that after a technical upgrade AI could do his inspection work. A labour arbitration panel and then two levels of court in Hangzhou found the termination unlawful and ordered compensation of more than 260,000 yuan. The court said that introducing AI to stay competitive is not in itself the kind of major change in objective circumstances that makes an employment contract impossible to perform, and that the pay-cut offer was not a reasonable proposal. The worker told CCTV that he had not found a suitable new job since the termination.
AI relation unknown Medium reported severity Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 7 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 16/10/2026
31 Oct 2025SpainUnidentified AI design tool
A company that designs and manufactures industrial furnaces dismissed a mechanical draughtsman on 31 October 2025 for objective reasons, citing a fall in business and the introduction of new technologies in its engineering department, including a model-based-definition design method and artificial-intelligence tools. According to press reports of the judgment, the dismissal letter put the cost of the tool licences at 4,725 euros a year against his gross annual salary of 29,871 euros and argued that the saving exceeded 80%. The social section of the Tribunal de Instancia de Bilbao declared the dismissal unfair, finding that the company had proved neither its economic losses nor the real implementation of the tools: an employee trained on the new method testified that she had never worked with it, and an implementation report was dated June 2026, seven months after the dismissal. The company must choose between reinstating the worker and paying 12,330.56 euros in compensation, less the amount already paid; the court rejected his claims that the dismissal was void and for a higher job category. One outlet reports that four draughtsmen were dismissed in total. El Periódico, which reported the same judgment in August 2026, dates it to early June 2026 and quotes the dismissal letter's statement that the company had introduced new artificial-intelligence systems that automate technical tasks previously done by specialised staff. The judgment was not read, and whether it is final is not reported.
AI relation unknown Medium reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 16/10/2026
Oct 2026BrazilUnidentified image tool
A candidate in a selection process to accredit social workers and psychologists for the court district of Brasnorte, in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, was eliminated after the selection support commission found that the 3x4 identification photo she submitted had 'clear and unmistakable traces of generation and/or editing by Artificial Intelligence' and a digital watermark in one corner. The commission's statement of 8 October 2026, accepted by the court district and published in the electronic Justice Gazette on 13 October, treated the picture as a simulated image that did not meet the call's requirement of a recent, faithful facial photograph, and her qualification was annulled. A second candidate was eliminated in the same decision for a mould-stained, outdated photo, with no AI involved. The candidate is not named in the reports, and her response and the tool used are not reported.
AI relation unknown Low reported severity Internal Action
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 15/10/2026