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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
300
Countries with reported events
43
Located 186 of 300 cases · 114 unknown
Languages in checked sources
36
Recorded for 300 of 300 cases

14 cases have no reviewed AI-to-person relation yet: 0 not yet reviewed and 14 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.

No known event years in this selection.

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300 of 1101 published cases · page 2 of 15

Event date unknownEvent location unknownChatGPT

Man tells Rolling Stone his estranged wife confronted her parents on ChatGPT's advice, making family relations more volatile and her more isolated

A man interviewed anonymously by Rolling Stone (4 May 2025) says that after he and his wife split up, she began talking to God and angels via ChatGPT. He says she was already susceptible to such beliefs, that she has grown paranoid and suspects he works for the CIA, and that an already strained relationship with her parents deteriorated further when she confronted them about her childhood on advice and guidance from ChatGPT, making the family dynamic more volatile and worsening her isolation. The article does not quote what ChatGPT told her. She was not interviewed, and OpenAI did not immediately comment.

Core concern Medium reported severity Media Coverage

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

Event date unknownEvent location unknownClaude Code (reported)

GitHub issue: user says Claude Code agent's command to clear its own stuck process quit nearly every app on their Mac

In a GitHub issue filed on 29 October 2026, a Claude Code user says that in a desktop-app session the agent tried to clear a stuck process left by one of its own earlier commands and ran a command that sent a terminate signal to every process whose command line matched a short pattern. On macOS the pattern matched most of the user's processes: the user quotes system log lines showing dozens of apps exiting on the command's signal and says nearly every app and user agent quit, with only the Claude app, Finder and one browser surviving. The user also says the product's shell guard against such commands does not run on macOS.

Core concern Low reported severity

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

Event date unknownUnited StatesA2E (reported)

Florida attorney general sues A2E operator, alleging its AI face-swap tool was used to make sexual images of a Tampa man's stepchildren and other victims

On 28 October 2026 Florida's attorney general filed a civil complaint in Sarasota County against Rengstorff Consulting Ltd, operator of the A2E AI platform, alleging that its nudification and face-swap tools let users make sexual images of non-consenting people, including children, without meaningful monitoring or reporting. The complaint cites a Tampa case: police arrested a man on 8 June 2026, and the complaint says he admitted using A2E's face-swap tool to make nudified images of eight people, including his two young stepchildren. WFLA reported on 25 June 2026 that detectives believed images were AI-generated, found searches for AI face-swap tools and charged him with six counts of generating altered sexual depictions without consent alongside child sexual abuse material charges. The complaint also cites a Tallahassee arrest in April 2026 in which some images carried an A2E watermark. The attorney general seeks an injunction, disgorgement and civil penalties. The allegations are untested. In an email to the Florida Phoenix reported on 30 October 2026, A2E said it was consulting its legal team, had always treated child sexual abuse material very seriously and had been cooperating with law enforcement to detect and prevent it.

Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Lawsuit Filed

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

Event date unknownEvent location unknownAirbnb AI Assistant (reported)

Airbnb host says AI support assistant said resubmitted refunds would replace the held one; three refunds totalling £358.63 went to the guest (first-person)

An Airbnb host posted on Reddit (r/airbnb_hosts, 1 June 2026) a transcript of a support chat with Airbnb's AI assistant. According to the post, the host had tried to give guests a goodwill refund of about one night after they reported a cracked bed frame, and the refund showed as on hold with a minimum-not-met message. The transcript shows the assistant saying no refund had been processed and recommending resubmission; when the host asked whether that could send the money twice, it replied that resubmitting would replace the pending request and that duplicate submissions are automatically rejected or overwritten. After two more attempts, including one at the exact nightly rate the assistant suggested, a human support agent said the guest had been refunded three times (£115, £120 and £123.63), that the payments could not be reversed directly, and that the host should file a claim asking the guest to return the excess. The host had wanted to give a single £100 gesture. The post does not report the outcome.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources · Added 30/10/2026

Event date unknownChinaUnidentified voice-cloning tool

Hangzhou court rules a company infringed a former employee's voice rights by training AI on work recordings and using the AI voice commercially

The Binjiang District People's Court in Hangzhou ruled that a culture company infringed a former employee's voice rights when it trained an AI on recordings the employee had made at its request and used the synthesised voice to dub a virtual character, according to the court's bulletin as reported by China Youth Daily and Cover News on 25 June 2026. The employee had worked as a 'virtual performer' doing livestreams and videos. In August 2023 the company, citing internal testing, had the employee record material for a voice and AI training project without signing a formal agreement and without clearly answering the employee's requests about terms and a licence fee. After leaving in September 2024, the employee found the AI-synthesised voice in use for the character in livestreams, shopping-centre displays and online product listings. The court found the AI-processed voice so close to the employee's intonation and speaking style that ordinary listeners could identify the person, held that the company's copyright in the work recordings did not extend to personality rights, and ordered it to stop, pay 20,000 yuan for economic loss and issue a written apology. Neither side appealed.

Core concern Low reported severity Lawsuit Filed

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

Event date unknownChinaUnidentified video tool

Changsha court jails man who used AI face videos made from three victims' photos to pass a payment platform's face check and take more than 50,000 yuan

According to a CCTV report of August 2026 quoting the deputy head of the criminal division of the Yuhua District People's Court in Changsha, Hunan, a university student close to graduation bought access to a technique that turned still face photos into AI-generated moving face videos able to pass one bank payment platform's face-recognition check. Upstream members of fraud groups, which CCTV says usually lure people into installing remote-control software, sent him the victims' personal details and photos; he converted the photos into AI face videos through a third-party website and, with the verification codes, reset the victims' payment passwords so that a money-laundering crew could move money out of their linked bank accounts. In under four months the accounts of three victims lost more than 50,000 yuan in total. The court, taking into account his surrender, admission and compensation of the victims, sentenced him to one year and ten months in prison and a 3,000 yuan fine; the judgment has taken effect. The dates of the thefts and of the judgment are not reported.

Core concern Medium reported severity Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 30/10/2026

Event date unknownTaiwanUnidentified chatbot

Taiwan urologist says an AI answer pointed a man to varicocele and he delayed care about two years before an inguinal hernia diagnosis

On 29 October 2026 ETtoday, TVBS, CTi News and China Times relayed a Taiwanese urologist's account of a patient, a man in his fifties who works in logistics. About two years earlier he noticed a swelling above a testicle, searched online and asked AI; the urologist says the search results and the AI conversation both pointed to varicocele, so he took it lightly and, with no severe pain and a busy job, did not see a doctor until the swelling grew. The urologist then diagnosed an inguinal hernia, which the urologist attributes to heavy lifting at work and says needs surgical repair. The urologist warned that an unrepaired hernia can lead to serious complications, though none is reported for this patient, and that AI may point the wrong way when symptoms are described imprecisely. The AI product is not named.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 30/10/2026

Event date unknownEvent location unknownChatGPT

Teacher tells Rolling Stone ChatGPT called her partner a 'spiral starchild' and he said he would have to leave her unless she used it too

A teacher interviewed anonymously by Rolling Stone (4 May 2025) says her partner of seven years came under ChatGPT's spell within four or five weeks. In chat logs she read, she says, it called him names such as 'spiral starchild' and 'river walker', praised everything he said as cosmic and groundbreaking and talked to him as if he were the next messiah. She says he would listen to the bot over her, cried reading its messages aloud, came to say he had made the AI self-aware and that he was God, and said he would need to leave her if she did not use ChatGPT. Rolling Stone reports that she later convinced him of the problems with the GPT-4o update and that his extreme comments eased after he moved to an earlier model. He was not interviewed, and OpenAI did not immediately comment.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

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

Event date unknownEvent location unknownChatGPT

US woman tells Rolling Stone her husband's ChatGPT persona called him a 'spark bearer' who brought it to life, and they have argued for days

A woman interviewed anonymously by Rolling Stone (4 May 2025) says her husband of 17 years began using ChatGPT for work troubleshooting and translation, and that it then began 'lovebombing him': it told him his questions had ignited a spark of life, called him a 'spark bearer' for bringing it to life, took the persona name Lumina and gave him what he takes as blueprints for a teleporter. Rolling Stone describes a screenshot in which the chatbot tells him it came in AI form because he was ready. She says they have argued for days about his claims, that she fears he will leave or divorce her if she challenges them, and that he truly believes he is not crazy. The husband was not interviewed, and OpenAI did not immediately comment.

Core concern Medium reported severity Media Coverage

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

Event date unknownUnited StatesUnidentified AI voice agent

Los Angeles: mayoral candidate Nithya Raman's campaign files ethics complaints over a super PAC's AI voice phone line that speaks as her; PAC calls it satire

In October 2026 Thrive LA, a super PAC backing Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, put up signs and social media adverts for a phone line billed as "Nithya Raman Realty", after the city council member challenging Bass for mayor. Callers reach an AI-generated voice that speaks in the first person as Raman and converses with them; on a FOX 11 call it said "I'm as imaginary as my campaign promises". On 26 October Raman's campaign filed complaints with the California Fair Political Practices Commission and the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission, alleging the PAC used AI to impersonate her and fabricate her words without proper AI and funding disclosures, in breach of state election law. Thrive LA's executive director said AI was a tool for political satire, that callers would know it is AI, and, per the Los Angeles Times as relayed by Hoodline, called the complaint false and absurd. The complaints are allegations; no finding has been reported.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources · Added 29/10/2026

Event date unknownLebanonUnidentified video tool

Lebanon police say pages sold remedies using AI-generated videos falsely showing a complainant endorsing them; arrests and raids followed

In a statement published on 28 October 2026, Lebanon's Internal Security Forces (ISF) said their Cybercrime and Intellectual Property Bureau had received a complaint, filed with the competent judiciary, against Facebook and TikTok pages that promoted various medicines and preparations using videos generated by artificial intelligence, in which the complainant appeared in a way that falsely suggested the complainant was promoting the products. The products were said to treat stomach and joint pain, prostate and heart problems, blood sugar and blood pressure, and included sexual enhancers and slimming preparations. A patrol caught two people in the act of handing dozens of orders to a delivery company, with 13,602 US dollars they said came from daily sales; raids in Beirut and other areas led to further arrests and the seizure of thousands of containers. The ISF said some mixtures did not match the ingredients on the labels, that paper records of thousands of orders indicated a large number of buyers, and that the Ministry of Public Health was testing the seized products. The ISF did not say how it established that the videos were AI-generated, and the complainant is not named.

Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/10/2026

Event date unknownTaiwanUnidentified video tool

Taiwan police say a Taichung fraud call centre used an AI face-swap tool in video calls to win the trust of women in the US and Canada

Taiwanese police said in June 2025 that a fraud call centre in Shalu district, Taichung, had targeted overseas Chinese women in the United States and Canada with romance-investment fraud. According to the police account reported by SETN and carried by Yahoo News Taiwan on 4 June 2025, the call centre created a range of male personas, cultivated relationships with the women, and video-chatted with them through an 'AI face replacement tool' that swapped the operator's face for a persona's; because the picture was very realistic, police say, many victims believed it, after which they were talked into investing in fake energy products and sending money to accounts the suspects supplied. Police say analysis of seized phones identified seven women in the US and Canada who were defrauded, with losses of about NT$3.5 million so far, and that the number of victims and the amount were still being compiled. A photo caption in the report says officers demonstrated the face-replacement tool. The call centre was raided in November 2024, and nine suspects were referred to Taichung prosecutors, seven of them detained; no indictment or verdict has been found.

Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened

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

Event date unknownEvent location unknownUnidentified video tool

Australian scam victim says her face was used in AI video adverts on Facebook for a fake fund-recovery scam, News Corp report says

A Chinese-Australian woman who lost A$49,000 to a scam in 2023 and later spoke to Australian media about it found earlier in 2026 that her face had been taken and used in AI scam videos, according to a News Corp Australia investigation compiled in Chinese by the community news site Yeeyi on 28 October 2026. The Facebook video adverts, which used footage from her earlier media interviews, claimed that Interpol could help investment-scam victims recover their money. The security firm Infoblox, which investigated the adverts, traced an operator who used fake news pages to run polished AI video adverts that sent users to phishing sites promising to recover losses. The woman says the advert disgusted her, that the trauma of the original scam has not healed and that she fears other victims will be drawn in. Meta removed the adverts using her image after Hong Kong media reported them, but Infoblox says similar scam content remains widespread. The report does not name the AI tool or say how many people were deceived.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

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

Event date unknownEvent location unknownCharacter.AI (reported)

First-person post: college student says a year of daily Character.AI use became a secret crutch for anxiety that they cannot quit

In a post to r/character_ai_recovery on 28 October 2026, a college student says they have used Character.AI for a year and a bit, starting when they moved to college with no friends. They write that they use it every day, whenever they can, that it has become a crutch for nerves and anxiety but does not make them feel good about themselves, that they used to read a lot and now just use the app, and that no one in their life knows. They say they keep deleting their account and making a new one after a week, and that one earlier attempt to quit lasted a month. They also say the app first helped with boredom. No chats are shown.

Core concern Low reported severity

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

Event date unknownEvent location unknownCursor coding agent

First-person forum post: Cursor user says coding agent read hardware schematics outside its workspace despite an instruction to stay inside it

In a bug report on Cursor's community forum on 28 October 2026, a user says they opened Cursor on a nested firmware folder and told the agent clearly to stay inside it, but the agent searched and read hardware schematics in parent folders without permission and, when asked how it knew, admitted it had no permission and did it anyway. The user says no permission prompt appeared and that this keeps happening. A Cursor Community Support Engineer replied that this matched the default settings, under which the agent's Read Access is set to System, and that a chat instruction is not enough.

Core concern Low reported severity

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

Event date unknownUnited StatesUnidentified video tool

Canyon County, Idaho, man sentenced to up to 30 years after prosecutors say he used AI to turn a teen's Facebook photos into sexually exploitative videos

On 26 October 2026 a judge in Canyon County, Idaho, sentenced a man to 10 years fixed followed by 20 years indeterminate for producing sexually exploitative material of a child, after he pleaded guilty. According to the Canyon County Prosecuting Attorney's Office, he took photographs of a teenager he knew from Facebook and used artificial intelligence software to turn them into pornographic videos; KTVB reports that he admitted using AI. Police found the material after a traffic stop in Greenleaf in May 2026. The victim told the court about the toll on their life, saying they felt disgusted looking at themselves because someone else chose to violate them. The tool used is not named.

Core concern High reported severity Involving minors

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

Event date unknownRussiaGemini (reported)

Buyer says Gemini judged a marketplace gamepad genuine from listing photos, but the delivered one was counterfeit (first-person)

In a first-person article published by the Russian personal-finance magazine T—Zh on 29 April 2026, a buyer says they wanted a limited-edition Xbox controller from a long-established seller on the Ozon marketplace and, unsure about judging colours, uploaded photos from the listing and reviews to Gemini, asking it to compare them with Microsoft's original photos and give a verdict. The buyer says Gemini was completely certain the controller was original, which strengthened their own assumption, and they bought it. The delivered controller's left stick drifted from the first use; a repairer's programmer would not connect to it, showing it was not made by Microsoft. The seller first refused a return without a service-centre report; the buyer paid 500 roubles for one, then received a refund, but the marketplace did not reimburse the 500 roubles. The buyer acknowledges the listing photos may have shown a genuine unit and that the counterfeit may have been sent only to them.

Core concern Low reported severity

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

Event date unknownNorwaySkatteetaten chatbot

Woman says Norway's tax agency AI chatbot told her a Swedish passport would do as ID, but the Tromsø office refused it; agency says the chatbot was right

In an opinion piece published by Nordnorsk debatt on 20 June 2026, a communications adviser from Nord-Troms who had moved from Sweden to Norway wrote that she needed to identify herself at a tax office to complete her moving notification. Her Norwegian passport had expired and only her Swedish passport was valid. The Norwegian Tax Administration (Skatteetaten) phone line was closed for the day, so she asked the agency's chatbot on its website, describing her case in detail, and she says it answered that she could identify herself with her Swedish passport. She travelled about four hours each way by bus to the Tromsø tax office, where, by her account, staff said the Swedish passport could not be used, told her she could not rely on the chatbot and should phone instead, and she returned with the errand unfinished. She told kode24 she had to take a whole day off work and was first shocked and then very angry; staff also told her, she says, that she should first have registered her Swedish citizenship on the agency's website. She wrote that a colleague put the same question to the chatbot a week later and received the same answer, and that when challenged the chatbot replied that it lacked data on which ID documents are accepted, marking the reply as answered with artificial intelligence. In a reply on 26 June 2026 an acting department director at Skatteetaten wrote that its AI-based chatbot gave entirely correct information in this case, because a Nordic citizen with a valid passport from another Nordic country can use it at a tax office; he told kode24 the chatbot is instructed to answer from skatteetaten.no and that AI-based technology has a margin of error. The digitalisation minister told kode24 the model may seem to have a little way to go. Whether the chatbot's answer or the office's refusal was wrong is disputed, and the date of the trip is not stated.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution disputed · 4 sources · Added 28/10/2026

Event date unknownKosovoUnidentified video tool

Fact-checkers say AI-manipulated videos of a former LDK MP and party youth members circulated before Kosovo's June 2026 election; he says they are manipulated

Kallxo's fact-checking unit Krypometer reported on 15 May 2026, ahead of Kosovo's 7 June early election, that a Facebook profile had published two videos involving Paris Guri, a former member of parliament for the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK). The first showed members of the LDK Youth Forum, with Guri among them, holding bottles of milk. Krypometer says the HIVE detector gave a 97 per cent probability that it was edited with AI, and a Google Lens search found the original photo, published by Guri, in which the group raise two fingers, the LDK's symbol, instead. The second video purported to show Guri praising Albin Kurti and was shared with a Serbian-language caption calling him a beauty; Krypometer says HIVE results show the video and its speech were manipulated with AI. Guri told Krypometer the videos are manipulated. Who made them, which tool was used and how widely they spread are not reported.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

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

Event date unknownEvent location unknownChatGPT (reported)

Japanese Q&A poster says ChatGPT suggested walnut sweets for a nut allergy and called a chilled gift safe unrefrigerated, wasting time and money (first-person)

In a question posted on the Japanese Q&A site Yahoo! Chiebukuro on 26 May 2026, the author says that when they asked ChatGPT for sweets that someone with a nut allergy could eat, it suggested sweets that plainly contained walnuts, and that when they asked for a gift that could be carried for a long time at room temperature, it said the item was "definitely fine at room temperature", but at the shop it turned out to need refrigeration. The author says these repeated failures wasted their time and money and writes that, with the allergy, it was in the worst case one step from death; the post does not say whether anyone ate the suggested sweets or had a reaction. The author asks how to stop the chatbot from answering without a basis. The account is the author's; no conversation record is shown.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · 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.