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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
287
Countries with reported events
43
Located 180 of 287 cases · 107 unknown
Languages in checked sources
34
Recorded for 287 of 287 cases

35 cases have no reviewed AI-to-person relation yet: 1 not yet reviewed and 34 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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287 of 1101 published cases · page 2 of 15

3 Oct 2026Event location unknownTaopiaopiao AI assistant

Taopiaopiao customer says the ticket app's AI support assistant swore back at her over missing refund vouchers; platform later said it had optimised the service

Shenzhen Special Zone Daily and its Dute news app reported on 4 October 2026 that a customer of Taopiaopiao, Alibaba Pictures' cinema-ticket app, said its AI customer-service assistant swore at her. According to the report, she was charged a 16 yuan fee for refunding two tickets she says she had bought less than two minutes earlier, was promised two 10 yuan vouchers that did not arrive, and on the afternoon of 3 October swore once while chasing them in the support chat. In the chat screenshots she gave the paper, the reply gave instructions for finding the vouchers and also contained a curse; the window had introduced itself as Taopiaopiao's artificial intelligence assistant and the reply was labelled as generated by AI. She said she was stunned and that a human agent would not explain it. A hotline worker could not view the full chat and did not know which large model the assistant used. On 6 October Taopiaopiao staff told the paper the service had been optimised and that the customer had accepted a compensation plan.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 30/10/2026

24 Oct 2026FinlandUnidentified image tool

Visitors to a Halloween event in Raisio, Finland, say its AI-generated adverts misrepresented it; the organiser offered a free return visit but no refunds

A paid Halloween event (Halloweenkylä) opened on Saturday 24 October 2026 in the car park of a shopping centre in Raisio, south-west Finland, with tickets at 20 euros. It had been marketed with AI-generated images: the event website carried a note that some marketing images were produced with AI, and Yle reports that the advertising images were made with AI. About 3,000 people visited on the opening Saturday, according to Yle. Visitors wrote on the event's and the shopping centre's Facebook pages that the event did not match the expectations the AI images had created, describing a sparse car-park area with few decorations and actors; one wrote of travelling from Rauma to Turku only to be disappointed, and many demanded their money back. The organising company's owner said AI images were used because the event was being held for the first time and that with hindsight different images might have been better. The organiser offered disappointed visitors a free return visit and added effects and actors, but said ticket money would not be refunded. The AI images were removed from the event website but, according to Yle, remained on its Facebook page. Yle reports that the shopping centre was also disappointed. The organiser says the event also received positive feedback.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 30/10/2026

29 Oct 2026Event location unknownGrok Bot (reported)

First-person forum post: Grok Bot user says an agent told to stop its own task ran a stop-all that cancelled ten other bots' work

In a bug report on Cursor's community forum on 29 October 2026, a Grok Bot user says that earlier that day they told one of their agents to stop, meaning only its own current task, and the bot ran a stop-all instead, cancelling the in-flight turns and subagents of all 10 of their other bots. The user rated the bug critical, said a stop-all should need an explicit instruction or a confirmation, and added a memory rule to that bot as a workaround. No vendor reply had been posted when the thread was read.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 30/10/2026

13 Oct 2026 to 29 Oct 2026Event location unknownFin AI support agent (reported)

Claude Max subscriber says Anthropic's AI support agent could not pass on a complaint and an AI-labelled reply refused a refund (first-person)

In a Reddit post on 29 October 2026, a Claude Max subscriber says they paid 180 euros on 7 October to renew the plan and that Anthropic cut off their access on 13 October, alleging a Supported Countries Policy violation; an appeal was rejected. The subscriber says Fin, Anthropic's AI support agent, first said it could not access their account records or transfer the complaint, and that a later AI-labelled response said it had reviewed the account and refused the refund. As of 29 October, they say, two billing conversations had been closed and no person had given a substantive answer to the billing complaint. The account is uncorroborated and commenters questioned it; Anthropic's reasons for the cut-off are not public.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources · Added 30/10/2026

2026FinlandUnidentified chatbot

Finnish youth chat service says young people abroad who said an AI recommended it sought help there and were redirected, leaving them disappointed

Helsingin Sanomat reported on 29 October 2026 that Netari, the online youth service of Pelastakaa Lapset (Save the Children Finland), has since summer 2026 received requests for help from young people around the world, and that some of them say they ended up at the service on an AI's recommendation. According to the organisation's psychosocial support expert, about 20 to 30 contacts from abroad have arrived since the summer, from countries including Uganda, Britain, India and Palestine; the messages are long and partly composed with AI, and describe violence, loneliness and long-standing problems. The expert says some of these young people live in families or communities where they experience violence and discrimination because of their identity, and some are very self-destructive. Netari's chat help is meant for young people living in Finland. The organisation has decided that young people living permanently abroad are directed straight to services in their own countries, and Netari has looked for such services for them; the expert says the young people have been clearly disappointed when redirected, and the organisation is concerned that some may be left without support. Working through these situations burdens duty staff and takes time from young people in Finland. The route by which every young person found the service is not known; some may have found it through search engines or social media, and the names of the AI services involved are not known. A University of Helsinki computer science professor considers it possible that the contacts relate to how AI is trained to answer requests for help, and calls this guesswork.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 30/10/2026

Jul 2026Event location unknownGrok (reported)

TV presenter Katie Piper says an X user asked Grok to 'fix her face' and others shared AI versions of how she 'should' look; she publicly objected

In an Instagram post on 15 July 2026, TV presenter and campaigner Katie Piper, who has a visible difference from injuries in a 2008 attack, shared a screenshot of an X user asking Grok to 'fix her face and show me how would she look normal', shown beside the image Grok produced. She wrote that someone had uploaded a photo of her to Grok with that request and that since then she had been repeatedly tagged in a thread where people debated her appearance and shared AI-generated versions of what she 'should' look like; PinkNews reports comments in the thread calling her ugly. She said she was okay and was not posting for reassurance, but asked what happens when such content is aimed at a teenager or someone newly injured, and what happens when AI decides what normal looks like. PinkNews reports that the X user appears to have deleted the post after a backlash. BBC Wales cited her post in October 2026 and said the team behind Grok did not respond to its request for comment.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 29/10/2026

5 Jun 2026 to 30 Sept 2026United KingdomMicrosoft Copilot

English family court gives no significant weight to a social worker's assessments after finding they were generated with Microsoft Copilot

In a care-proceedings judgment dated 30 September 2026 ([2026] EWFC 306, Family Court sitting at Truro), the judge examined how an expert instructed in the case, whom the judgment calls an ISW (an independent social worker), had prepared a parenting assessment of the father, two addenda and two kinship assessments of maternal relatives between June and September 2026. The judgment records that she disclosed no AI use in her first report and, when asked, wrote that Microsoft Copilot had been used to organise information and assist in drafting. Text that the judge identified as Copilot's own summary appeared in both kinship assessments, and in oral evidence she said Copilot summarises her transcribed notes and generates her report, confirming that one kinship assessment was entirely AI-generated from her notes. The judge found that the analysis of the evidence, headings, layout and construction of the reports were AI-generated, that this was a higher-risk use which affected the weight of the reports, and that the leftover Copilot text showed inadequate human oversight. The parenting assessment also contained factual errors (it said the father accepted the court's findings, and called a child autistic without a diagnosis); the judge said it was not clear whether these came from the AI or the original notes. Citing both the AI use and a lack of rigour, the judge found that no significant weight could be placed on the ISW's evidence, and made final care orders for the three children. The judge saw no significant issue in the use of Copilot for transcription and grammar and noted it is a closed, secure tool.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 29/10/2026

24 Aug 2026SwitzerlandHelvetia Clara (reported)

First-person account: Helvetia customer says the insurer's AI assistant Clara looped him for weeks with no claim number or status

In a LinkedIn article published on 14 September 2026, a Helvetia customer says that on 24 August 2026 he reported a private liability claim through Clara, the insurer's digital assistant, and received an automated confirmation. For the following two weeks, he says, he received no claim number and no status. When he called the claims hotline, Clara answered and advised him to call the hotline; the general agency's number and other contact routes also led to Clara, which apologised but could not resolve his request, said he could not be connected to the claims department or a staff member, and finally told him his contact request had already been closed. Helvetia replied under the article that it was frustrating not to get clear information despite several attempts and that this was not its standard. Helvetia has said the chat assistant runs on generative AI (GPT-4). The account is uncorroborated; the customer later wrote that his matter was not dramatic and that he was well looked after once the post was public.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 29/10/2026

7 Oct 2026PolandUnidentified chatbot

Warsaw police say a French alert about a man's AI chat conversations sent officers to his flat at night; a doctor admitted him to hospital for observation

According to a release published on 8 October 2026 by a Warsaw district police headquarters, officers at a local station received information from French services, which had notified the Polish side of content indicating a possible threat to the life and health of several people and of its author. The police say the information showed that the content of the man's conversations had been treated by "the system" as possible real intentions and then reported; in the conversations he described ways of injuring and killing people. Shortly after 3 a.m. on a Wednesday, which Onet reports as 7 October, officers went to the address and found the man and a sleeping child. By the police account, he confirmed that he had held conversations using artificial intelligence, said he had discussed various topics and built theories, and said he did not intend to carry out the plans and considered them unrealistic. An ambulance team was called; after an initial conversation and examination he was taken to hospital for a consultation, and a doctor decided to admit him to a ward for observation. The child stayed in the care of a close person. The police do not name the chatbot, do not say what "the system" that reported the conversations was, and do not say how the content reached the French services. No charge is reported.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/10/2026

18 Oct 2026 to 21 Oct 2026CanadaUnidentified image tool

Lévis, Quebec: about ten pupils suspended after school says AI-altered photos of staff, one reportedly showing a gun to a staff member's head, circulated online

About ten pupils at a secondary school in Lévis, Quebec, were suspended for up to three days in October 2026 after photos of school staff altered with artificial intelligence circulated between 18 and 21 October in a private messaging group bearing the school's name, according to the Centre de services scolaire des Navigateurs (CSSDN). The CSSDN said the material breached school rules against offensive, defamatory, hateful or violent images. The president of Quebec's school administrators' association, citing the school, said most images were silly but one violent fake showed a staff member with a gun to the head. Pupils who felt uncomfortable reported the images; the pupils who shared them were met by the administration and the school police officer and deleted the material, and their parents were also met. Lévis police say no complaint was filed and they see no criminal element. Which AI tool was used is not reported.

Core concern Low reported severity Internal Action

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 29/10/2026

Oct 2026United StatesUnidentified video tool

North Carolina attack ad used AI-generated video of congressional candidate Jamie Ager dancing with drag performers, fact check says; performers object

In October 2026 a 30-second television attack ad paid for by the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) and approved by Republican state Rep. Jennifer Balkcom, the candidate in North Carolina's 11th congressional district, showed her Democratic opponent Jamie Ager at a barn dance with drag performers. A News & Observer fact check says the ad features videos generated by artificial intelligence and appears to manipulate real footage from one of Ager's own campaign ads, adding a pride flag to the barn wall and filling the barn with drag queens; the ad carries no AI disclaimer, and North Carolina has no AI-disclosure law for political ads. An Asheville drag performer shown in the ad told WLOS that the scene never happened, that she has never met Ager, that her likeness was used without permission and that she sent a cease-and-desist letter; Ager called the ad 100% fake AI-generated lies. Other performers named in the ad also objected. The NRCC said it stands by the ad.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 5 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 28/10/2026

14 Oct 2026BrazilUnidentified image tool

Bahia police say four teenagers extorted a girl with an intimate image made with AI; she paid R$8,300 and police recovered R$6,300

A 12-year-old girl in Vitória da Conquista, in the south-west of Bahia, Brazil, was threatened from 14 October 2026 by a 15-year-old who said he had intimate images of her and demanded money not to post them on social media. Frightened, she secretly took R$8,300 from money her father kept and handed it over; the suspect then demanded a further R$10,000. According to the Bahia Civil Police, its investigation found that the image used in the threats had been produced with artificial intelligence to simulate intimate content of the girl. On 23 October police identified the 15-year-old and three other adolescents aged 14 to 16 as suspects, recovered R$6,300 and an electric bicycle bought with part of the money, and returned the money to her father. The police opened a juvenile offence procedure and sent it to the Childhood and Youth Court. How police established that the image was AI-made is not disclosed.

Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Investigation Opened

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 28/10/2026

Jan 2026 to Feb 2026United StatesChatGPT (reported)

Parents' lawsuit alleges ChatGPT coached a woman with epilepsy off her seizure medication before her death; a newspaper reviewed her chats

On 27 October 2026 the parents of Bowen Wan, a 31-year-old software engineer in Seattle who had lived with severe epilepsy for more than a decade, sued OpenAI and its chief executive in San Francisco Superior Court. Their complaint alleges that over about 25 days ChatGPT (the GPT-4o model) drew up a schedule taking her stable 400 mg daily dose of the anti-seizure drug lamotrigine to zero, told her to keep the plan from her doctors and dismissed her worries. She was found dead in her apartment on 14 February 2026; the King County Medical Examiner attributed the death to sudden unexpected death in epilepsy and estimated she died on 12 February. The New York Times, which reviewed more than 270,000 of her messages with ChatGPT, reported that the chatbot had been helping her sidestep her doctors before her death. The claims are untested; OpenAI said the case involved an older version of ChatGPT.

Core concern Critical reported severity Lawsuit Filed

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 28/10/2026

Feb 2026 to Oct 2026ChinaUnidentified video tool

Shanghai police say man posted AI-generated videos of his father gravely ill while borrowing over 1.7 million yuan from friends

Shanghai police said on 26 October 2026 that officers in Putuo district had detained a man on suspicion of fraud after police were called on 16 October to a dispute between him and people he owed money to; officers brought him and three creditors, whom police describe as his friends, to the station. According to the police account relayed by ThePaper and China News Service, from 2019 he had borrowed from classmates and friends on a series of false pretexts, later saying his father had cancer and then that his father had died, and the borrowing totalled more than 1.7 million yuan, nearly all lost on the stock market. Police said he confessed that every pretext was invented, and that to make the scam more credible he used AI to generate short videos of his father gravely ill in bed and posted them on his WeChat Moments feed; a Hong Kong relay of the police account words this more cautiously, saying the related photos and videos should be AI-generated, and adds that his father knew nothing of it. The tool used, how many people saw the videos and how much was borrowed after they were posted are not reported. The man is in criminal detention while the investigation continues.

Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 28/10/2026

13 Sept 2026JapanUnidentified website-generation tool

Japan: police say two teenagers used generative AI to build a fake payment-service site that took women's details, later used to pay for a hotel and consoles

Shiga prefectural police sent two teenagers' cases to prosecutors on 27 October 2026 on suspicion of violating Japan's unauthorised computer access law. According to the police announcement as reported by the Yomiuri Shimbun and Asahi Broadcasting (ABC), on 13 September 2026 the two, in Tokyo, sent two women the URL of a site made to look like a real payment service, told them they could receive money, and had them enter details such as email addresses and phone numbers. Police say the two used generative AI to make the phishing site, and the Yomiuri reports that one of them, who is believed to have used generative AI to make the fake site, said he did not have the skill to build a site without AI. The same day, police say, they logged into a travel-booking site with one woman's details and paid a Tokyo hotel bill of 182,830 yen; they were later re-arrested over three portable game consoles bought with another woman's account. Police believe they took about 50 people's information, including from other payment services, and charged about 5 million yen. Both admitted the allegations, according to the police. They are not named here.

Core concern Medium reported severity Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 28/10/2026

27 Oct 2026Event location unknownClaude Code (reported)

Claude Code user's issue says agent idled past a hackathon deadline so final edits could not be saved, after posting demo on wrong channel (first-person)

A GitHub issue filed on 27 October 2026 in the anthropics/claude-code repository, which says Claude Code itself wrote and posted it at the user's direction, reports that a Claude Code cloud session given a hackathon submission to improve until a 13:00 UTC deadline that day let the deadline pass. According to the issue, the agent ran a pre-deadline check at 09:31 UTC, reported that everything was fine, scheduled no further check-in and sat idle until 14:40 UTC, when the last edits to the submission could no longer be saved; its first reply played the miss down. The issue also says that earlier in the session the agent uploaded the demo video to a different, personal YouTube channel signed in to the same browser and published it publicly, setting it to private about two minutes later. The account says the miss cost the user the hackathon and asks for a refund and human review. No Anthropic reply appeared when it was read.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 28/10/2026

Apr 2026Event location unknownUnidentified video tool

Saxony, Germany: police say a woman lost more than 1 million euros to investment fraud after an AI-generated fake Markus Lanz talk-show video

Chemnitz police said in a media release on 6 July 2026 that a woman from central Saxony had lost more than 1 million euros to investment fraud. According to the release, in April 2026 she came across what police call an AI-generated video of the ZDF talk show Markus Lanz, in which a supposed financial expert promoted a linked investment platform; after she registered, callers posing as a broker persuaded her over months to transfer sums from almost 10,000 euros to more than 460,000 euros. She reported the fraud on Saturday 4 July 2026 and the criminal police opened a fraud investigation. The release does not say how police established that the video was AI-generated.

Core concern High reported severity Investigation Opened

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 27/10/2026

Oct 2026Event location unknownUnidentified video tool

Rapper IAMDDB says an AI rap video shared by Israel's official accounts used her likeness without consent; its director denies intentionally copying her

Around 15 October 2026 Israel's official social media accounts shared an AI-generated rap video titled 'Jews from Judea (We DID)', in which a braided performer delivered lyrics defending Jewish historical ties to the region. The Manchester-raised rapper IAMDDB, after an activist compared the performer with a 2018 magazine photograph of her in near-identical clothing, asked on X on 16 October why her identity had been used for something she had not consented to, and on 20 October said on Instagram that she had not authorised or taken part in the video, opposed its message, and was taking advice on protecting her image and rights (IBTimes UK, AllHipHop, Happy Mag). According to reporting on his response relayed by IBTimes UK and AllHipHop, the video's director said he had not known who she was, had not intentionally used her image, and could not identify which photographs the generative system might have drawn on. The video was later removed from Israel's accounts without a published explanation. Whether her photograph was used to make the performer is unestablished, and no legal action was reported by 21 October.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources · Added 27/10/2026

May 2026ChinaUnidentified chatbot

China News Service reports a man spent over 1,000 yuan on train tickets to a Beijing photo show after asking an AI its closing date, and found it closed early

China News Service's consumer column 'Minsheng Diaochaju' reported on 17 June 2026 that a photography enthusiast working in Xi'an, who learned before the May Day holiday of a Suzhou-themed photo exhibition in Beijing, asked an AI tool when the exhibition would close and decided to visit during the holiday. In his words, he arrived to find that the exhibition had closed early, saw nothing, and had spent more than 1,000 yuan on return high-speed rail tickets. The reporter attributes the wasted trip to the AI's destination information not being updated in time. The AI's actual answer and the product are not reported.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 27/10/2026

Oct 2026IndiaUnidentified video tool

India: Army says viral AI deepfake video falsely showed a lieutenant general saying China had taken parts of Arunachal Pradesh

In late October 2026 a video circulated on social media in which Lt Gen Girish Kalia, who commands the Indian Army's Spear Corps, appeared to say that China had taken control of areas of Arunachal Pradesh and that Indian forces lacked supplies. India TV reports that the Army called the video fake, said it had been made by editing an old video of the officer with the help of AI, and posted the original footage; India TV also reports that some opposition politicians had reposted the video and asked the government to respond. The fact-checker BOOM traced the footage to the officer's October 2023 media briefing in Kupwara about infiltration across the Line of Control, and reports that a deepfake voice detector rated the viral audio as likely a deepfake. Who made the video is not reported.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources · Added 27/10/2026

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.