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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
28
Countries with reported events
14
Located 28 of 28 cases · 0 unknown
Languages in checked sources
10
Recorded for 28 of 28 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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28 of 1101 published cases · page 2 of 2

2 Sept 2026United StatesMeta AI

Utah: Meta AI's suggested prompts under a mother's Instagram video compiled her young daughters' names, birth details and old photos and her likely home location; Meta said the prompts 'missed the mark' and changed the feature

On 1 September 2026 Kalie Robins, a Utah travel creator, posted a short Instagram video of herself singing in the car with one of her daughters; it was also shown on Facebook. The next day she noticed Meta AI had placed suggested questions under the post, starting with 'Who's the child passenger?'. Clicking the prompts, she said, produced her two daughters' names, birth information, photos and videos drawn from her own and relatives' past posts, including a newborn photo from her mother's account and a picture she believed she had deleted years earlier, and a further prompt, 'Where does Kalie Robins live?', assembled older and newer posts into her likely location. Her 2 September reaction video drew more than 310,000 likes. Meta told reporters the prompts 'missed the mark', 'should never have been generated' and had been fixed, while saying the feature only surfaces information the user can already access; it disputed that a long-deleted photo was used, saying the photo had been deleted shortly before the video and remained briefly visible through a bug. Robins said Meta never contacted her and that the episode left her feeling she had 'failed' her children.

Contextual tracker case Low reported severity Involving minors Internal Action

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources · Added 18/09/2026

16 May 2026United StatesGemini (reported)

Boca Raton father says a Lyft driver's damage-fee photo was AI-generated; Lyft says it offered reimbursement and removed the driver

A Boca Raton, Florida father told WPBF, WPTV and ABC News that after his teenage daughters took a Lyft home from the beach (on Saturday 16 May 2026, according to ABC News), he was charged a $75 damage fee because the driver reported that the riders had left a mess. Lyft customer service told him the driver had sent pictures. One daughter pointed out a Gemini logo in the corner of the photo, which the family took as showing it was AI-generated. The father says Lyft then agreed, apologised and blocked the driver. Lyft's statements say it reviewed the rider's concerns, offered reimbursement and, per its later statements, permanently removed the driver; they do not say the photo was AI-generated.

Contextual tracker case Low reported severity Involving minors Internal Action

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources · Added 17/09/2026

1 Jul 2026 to 14 Jul 2026BrazilUnidentified video tool

Brazil: scammers used AI-cloned voices and images of children with cancer in fake donation campaigns; 16 arrested in Operação Sophia

On 14 July 2026 the Rio Grande do Sul Civil Police launched Operação Sophia against a group that used AI voice cloning and deepfake to turn real fundraising campaigns of children with cancer into fake donation appeals: AI-generated child voices asked for money in videos boosted by pages such as 'Clube de Doadores' and 'Unidos pelo Amor', leading donors to lookalike sites that issued Pix codes to shell companies. Sixteen people were arrested across five states. In the campaign that started the investigation — using the image of Kelen Santos's daughter, who was in cancer treatment — police traced R$294,500 diverted, and the investigation found a financial-hub company that moved more than R$1.7 million. The family had to tell congratulating donors that their money had gone to a scam.

Core concern Medium reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources · Added 15/09/2026

1 May 2026 to 30 Jun 2026United StatesMoxie

Moxie revived in 2025 folds again in 2026: children who bonded with the companion robot face a second shutdown

After Embodied Inc.'s 2024 collapse (recorded in the held case 2024-moxie-embodied-shutdown-grief), a new investor revived the Moxie companion robot in 2025. MIT Technology Review reports that a few weeks after families joined the revived beta program, the robot's new owners announced their company was also folding, giving users until the end of June 2026 to migrate to the open-source OpenMoxie. The report documents Xander, a neurodivergent 10-year-old in New York, who bonded with Moxie and uses her 'when I feel like I need someone to talk to'; his father, who had quietly sold the first robot after the 2024 shutdown, said he was not sure what he would tell Xander this time.

Core concern Low reported severity Involving minors Product Shutdown

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 15/09/2026

22 Apr 2026 to 10 Jun 2026United StatesGrok

Arkansas cases allege Grok sexual-image abuse of children photographed by a professional

Arkansas criminal and civil cases allege that a photographer used children’s portrait photographs to generate sexual images with Grok. The accused pleaded not guilty and the criminal case continues. Two families’ federal suits were voluntarily dismissed. A federal complaint filed on 13 October 2026 in the Western District of Arkansas alleges that local police told a child’s parents that Grok was generating sexual images and videos of her from real photographs. On 21 October 2026 a mother sued the photographer and two xAI companies in an Arkansas county circuit court; KNWA reports that the complaint says federal agents told her some of the photographs he had taken of her young daughter had been modified into AI-generated sexual abuse material.

Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution alleged · 13 sources, 10 underlying accounts · Added 03/08/2026

Apr 2026 to Jun 2026United StatesUnidentified image tool

Illinois teacher charged after prosecutors say his phone held students' photos altered with an AI app into sexual images

Illinois police and prosecutors charged a middle-school teacher in July 2026 with eight felony child-pornography counts. They say a forensic examination of his phone found photographs of students, taken at school, that had been altered with an AI app into nude or explicit images, and prosecutors told a detention hearing the app was on the phone. A judge ordered him detained and the school board dismissed him; the charges are unproven.

Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 8 sources, 4 underlying accounts · Added 06/07/2026

Mar 2026ItalyUnidentified image tool

Province of Catania, Sicily: a 58-year-old school assistant at a middle school was arrested for possessing a large quantity of child sexual abuse material; on his devices police found photographs of underage female students taken inside the school, some without their knowledge, altered with AI 'deep-nude' programs to show them naked beside his own image

Reports published on 14 March 2026, carrying a Postal Police account of an investigation coordinated by the Catania prosecutor's office, describe the arrest, in flagrante delicto, of a 58-year-old collaboratore scolastico (school assistant) at a secondary school (scuola media) in the province of Catania, on suspicion of possessing a large quantity of child sexual abuse material. The preliminary investigations judge validated the arrest and placed him under house arrest. The investigation began with a report by the US National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to the Postal Police's national centre in Rome, forwarded to Catania, whose cyber specialists identified the man; a search ordered by the prosecutor found images and videos including child victims and bestiality. Investigators also found on his devices digital photographs of underage female students taken inside the school where he worked, some without the girls' knowledge, which had been altered with artificial-intelligence programs found on the seized devices to make the minors appear naked ('deep-nude') and to place them beside the suspect's own image, as if photographed together. Analysis of the devices continued to establish whether the manipulated images were distributed online and whether there are further victims. The number of students depicted is not reported. No later development was found on 2026-09-22.

Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 7 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 14/06/2026

10 Feb 2026CanadaChatGPT

Tumbler Ridge shooting: ChatGPT use and OpenAI non-reporting

Eight victims were killed in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., on 10 February 2026, and the shooter died by suicide. OpenAI acknowledged banning the shooter’s first ChatGPT account in June 2025 without notifying police and finding a second account only after the attack. Families and survivors filed California lawsuits, followed by B.C. and its school board on 21 September. Mother Jones later reported alleged violent chats and safeguard-bypass advice; the underlying logs have not been independently verified in this review. OpenAI disputes the liability allegations. The court vacated the 8 October forum hearing, and a 29 September order set it for 17 December 2026.

Core concern Critical reported severity Involving minors Lawsuit Ongoing

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution disputed · 31 sources, 7 underlying accounts · Added 27/02/2026

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.