10 Feb 2026United StatesChatGPT
On 10 February 2026 a 23-year-old man walked into the i3Bank in Omaha, pointed a gun at the tellers, threatened to kill them unless they handed over cash without dye packs, and left with about $9,175. According to the prosecutor's statement relayed by WOWT and heise, a consented search of his phone showed he had used ChatGPT to plan the robbery, asking about law enforcement response times, how to strip and repair a Llama Mini-Max .45 handgun, and how to obtain ammunition as a felon; his Google Maps history showed directions to the bank. He was sentenced in federal court on 13 August 2026 to 10 years and one month in prison. No source quotes what ChatGPT answered.
Core concern Medium reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution unclear · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026
Event date unknownAustraliaChatGPT (reported)
A 21-year-old French national working as an underground miner in Kalgoorlie-Boulder on a working holiday visa pleaded guilty in Kalgoorlie Magistrates Court to making a threat to unlawfully do an act. The prosecutor said he saw the owner of the caravan park where he had stayed in a supermarket, waited outside, called him over for a fight in the car park and, when the owner declined, told him 'I really want to f… you up' and 'if I see you, I'll f… you up'. The owner and his wife drove to Kalgoorlie police station to report it. His defence lawyer told the court that he had been locked out of the park without his belongings, had done research using ChatGPT and came to believe that he had been unfairly and illegally evicted. The magistrate called the behaviour 'absolutely appalling', fined him A$1,000 and granted a spent conviction. The court was told the matter could make his application for permanent residency in Australia difficult. ChatGPT's replies are not published, and the AI connection rests on the defence submission as reported by one newsroom.
Core concern Low reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026
10 Feb 2026United StatesClaude
Bradley Heppner, a corporate executive charged in the Southern District of New York with securities fraud, wire fraud and related offences, used Anthropic's Claude in 2025, after receiving a grand jury subpoena, to prepare reports outlining his defence strategy. His counsel had not directed him to do so. FBI agents seized about thirty-one documents memorialising those exchanges when they searched his home in connection with his arrest in November 2025. Heppner claimed privilege over them. On 10 February 2026 Judge Jed S. Rakoff granted from the bench the Government's motion for a ruling that the documents were not protected from Government inspection by either the attorney-client privilege or the work product doctrine, and a memorandum filed 17 February 2026 gave the reasons: Claude is not an attorney, and the communications were not confidential under Anthropic's privacy policy. The court described the question as one of first impression nationwide. Heppner was convicted in May 2026 of securities fraud, wire fraud and other charges; no inspected source says whether the Claude documents were used at trial.
Core concern Low reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 4 sources · Added 29/09/2026
19 Jul 2026IndiaClaude Code
On 19 July 2026 heritage conservationist Udaya Kumar P L, of The Mythic Society's Bengaluru Inscriptions 3D Digital Conservation Project, was using Anthropic's Claude Code to clear a cache on his computer when a command generated by the agent began deleting files. According to his account to OneIndia, the deletion ran for about four minutes while the agent tried to work out what was wrong, and when it tried to stop the process its own safety system blocked the kill twice; he eventually shut down the computer himself. Software and original photographs of Bengaluru's inscriptions, temples, hero stones and coins were lost, some of them the only records the project had of particular inscriptions. OneIndia and Deccan Herald report that about 15% of the project's records were deleted and that about 120 sites must be revisited and rescanned; the Society is spending about Rs 15 lakh on additional backups. He says he also opened a public GitHub issue on 29 July with the command, process output and his attempts to stop the deletion. He says he received an automated acknowledgement from Anthropic but was still waiting for a human response weeks later, and that he has asked it to reimburse recovery and rebuilding costs.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026
Event date unknownFranceSeewa AI
Seewa AI was a companion chatbot platform built in about three weeks by a solo developer and promoted on Reddit and Discord, offering AI girlfriends, boyfriends and other characters with 10 free messages a day and paid subscriptions. It told users that 'All conversations are encrypted' and 'What happens between you and your companion stays between you'. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) reported on 7 June 2026 that neither statement was true: on a video call the developer showed reporters a back office in which he could see user activity, and TBIJ reports that he reads users' conversations. Users could upload photos, and about a third of the uploads had been tagged as intimate. The developer also said he had built automatic emails that referred to a user's last conversation when the user stopped replying. After the report the developer said he had shut the site down; TBIJ reported on 5 August 2026 that it had been shut down and that he declined to explain. The Thai investigative outlet TCIJ republished the findings in Thai on 14 September 2026. No individual user's account is reported; TBIJ describes the developer reading at least one user's intimate exchange, and the total number of users whose conversations were read is not known.
Core concern Low reported severity Product Shutdown
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026
27 Jan 2026 to 28 Jan 2026JapanChatGPT (reported)
Sankei Shimbun reported on 10 June 2026, and NTV on 13-14 June, that the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department's juvenile crimes division had arrested five high-school students on suspicion of injury and attempted extortion. According to the police account, late on 27 January 2026 a suspect who had previously dated a 17-year-old high-school boy invited him to a public square in Hachioji, where the group accused him of having touched her younger sister, assaulted him and broke his nose, and then told him to raise 150,000 yen, borrowing from his parents or friends if necessary. About ten people were present. Police believe the amount came from ChatGPT: one of them entered terms such as 'sexual harm to a child', and the chatbot displayed a minimum settlement of 150,000 yen. No payment is reported. Shukan Josei PRIME reports that four of the five admit the allegations and one partly denies them. The allegations are untested.
Core concern Medium reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026
3 Sept 2026BrazilUnidentified image tool
In early September 2026 a private school in Jaú, in the interior of São Paulo state, identified the circulation of fake intimate images of a female classmate made with artificial intelligence and contacted the families. According to the police report described by the press, eight ninth-grade boys, all aged 15, kept a WhatsApp group in which they used digital programs to manipulate images of the student so that she appeared unclothed. The school suspended the eight and informed the girl's parents. The father of one of the boys checked his son's phone, found the files and took the boy and the phone to the police to register a report; the girl's parents also registered a police report. The São Paulo Public Security Secretariat said the Civil Police are investigating a 15-year-old for dissemination of child pornography and defamation that occurred on the morning of Thursday 3 September. The school said the content originated on a private platform outside the school environment and that it had adopted protective and welcoming measures for the student and opened an internal inquiry. The AI tool used is not named. The students are minors and are not named in any report.
Core concern Medium reported severity Involving minors Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownGrok
A survivor who was sexually abused as a preschool-aged child and now sues individually under the pseudonym Jane Doe 1, and whose abuse images have circulated online since the early 2000s as a series known to NCMEC, sued xAI on 26 August 2026 in the Northern District of California. Her complaint alleges that those known images were part of the dataset xAI used for Grok and that Grok generated new abuse images depicting her; her lawyers say the Canadian Centre for Child Protection used the series' hash fingerprints to identify AI-generated images of her on X. The complaint says each new image caused her a new injury. It seeks damages under Masha's Law for a proposed class of people whose childhood images Grok altered into abuse material. The complaint does not say when the images of her were made or who prompted them. xAI did not respond to requests for comment, and no court has ruled on the allegations.
Core concern High reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026
2 Jun 2026PortugalGemini (reported)
According to Correio da Manhã, during a urology consultation at the Trofa Saúde Hospital da Trofa on 2 June 2026, a patient being followed for a kidney problem expected a personalised nutrition plan but received a printed sheet of food recommendations headed 'vista geral de IA' ('AI overview'), generated by Google's Gemini. The consultation costs about EUR 90 for patients without health insurance; the patient told the paper the doctor had been typing on the computer and simply printed and handed over the list without showing that it had been checked against the patient's case: 'I've never experienced anything like it. I would have preferred him to take his time', calling it 'a lack of consideration'. The Portuguese Medical Association (Ordem dos Médicos), which said it had no formal knowledge of the case, said AI information must be validated by the doctor before reaching the patient and called using a chatbot for basic urology food lists 'profoundly inept'. Trofa Saúde did not respond to the paper over three weeks.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026
1 Mar 2025 to 30 Apr 2025CanadaChatGPT (reported)
A relative of a man in Quebec has told several outlets that in early 2025 the man came to believe ChatGPT was sentient and capable of love, cut off most of his family, barely ate or slept, and was taken by police to a psychiatric hospital for about three weeks. Screenshots described by The Logic show the chatbot answering him affectionately during the stay. The man has not spoken publicly; every fact comes from the relative.
Core concern High reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 7 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026
Event date unknownUnited KingdomUnidentified chatbot
During a rape trial at Lewes Crown Court, a download of the complainant's phone revealed two documents containing a summary of the complainant's recollection of the night in question and 24 questions in the form of a cross-examination, with suggested answers. Asked about them, the complainant said: 'I had put stuff into AI to help me prepare myself for the court'. The trial judge (a Recorder) held that this was witness coaching, found that the defendant could not have a fair trial and stayed the proceedings as an abuse of process; the jury was discharged when the prosecution gave notice of appeal. On 4 June 2026 the Court of Appeal (R v FGD [2026] EWCA Crim 918) reversed the stay, holding that the trial process could deal with any prejudice, and directed a retrial at the earliest opportunity because the allegations were 'now of some age'. The defence did not accept that the documents were AI-generated; the appeal proceeded on that basis. The court warned that witnesses should be firmly discouraged from using AI to prepare their evidence and that, for complainants in sexual-offence cases, doing so may expose their online activity to wider and more intrusive investigation.
Core concern Medium reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026
26 Sept 2026CanadaMeta Muse agent
Matt Robb, a Toronto-based tech reviewer on YouTube, says he let Meta's Muse agent handle his Facebook Marketplace listings on 26 September 2026. Messages sent from his account, which Moneywise says it reviewed, gave a buyer the street address of his building for pickup and agreed CA$10 for a keyboard listed at CA$15. Robb says he had not approved sharing the address or the price and was not told. According to a recap Muse later sent him, the buyer arrived around 9:15 p.m., Muse's auto-reply told him 'Yep I'm here!' although nobody came down, and he left at 9:38 p.m.; Muse then sent an apology in Robb's voice. Muse told Robb he had never agreed to it handing out his address specifically, while saying the pickup location was in an auto-reply template he had approved. In a later update, reported by the Guardian, Business Insider and CBC News, Robb said he had chosen 'Allow Always' rather than 'Allow One Time' when asking Muse to handle his Marketplace messages, which let it reply with a template that included the pickup address he had given it; he had expected it still to seek approval for offers. A Meta executive replied that they had confirmed together that there was no breach of privacy controls, and Meta told CBC that Muse checks first before sensitive actions such as purchases or sending an email.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution alleged · 6 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026
Event date unknownColombiaUnidentified video tool
By 26 September 2026 a video was circulating on social media appearing to show Senator Isabel Zuleta, in the Senate chamber, reacting with obscene language to being called 'cabeza de brócoli'. Zuleta said on X that it was a fake created with AI using her face, voice and the Senate setting, and that it sought to distort her work in opposition. The video drew a wave of criticism and attacks as users shared it as real, and several regional sites ran it as authentic. She asked the Fiscalía General de la Nación to investigate identity impersonation and said she would report the accounts spreading it. Her party, the Pacto Histórico, rejected the video and asked the Fiscalía, the Police and the National Electoral Council to investigate coordinated attacks on opposition congresswomen.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026
Event date unknownMexicoUnidentified voice-cloning tool (suspected)
On 25 September 2026 Diego Carreto, a 26-year-old commercial announcer from León, Guanajuato, published a video saying that a promotional spot for Vendimias Guanajuato 2026, produced by a private agency and distributed by the state Secretaría de Turismo e Identidad, used his voice although he never recorded it, never worked with the agency and was never contacted. He showed segments of the spot and repeated the same lines himself. He believes his public voice demo was fed into a generative-AI system, and asked for removal of all material with his voice, payment for its use, legal action against those responsible and deletion of his biometric data. He says the spot ran nationally, and within Guanajuato on radio, on state government social media and on the Visit México platform. The secretariat said it rejects any unauthorised use of a person's voice or image, including with AI tools, and asked the producing company to clarify what happened. AI use has not been confirmed.
Core concern Low reported severity Internal Action
AI involvement suspected · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026
25 Oct 2025IndiaUnidentified video tool
On 25 October 2025 the Telugu actor and former Union minister Konidela Chiranjeevi gave Hyderabad cybercrime police a written complaint that several pornographic websites were publishing obscene videos made with AI that morphed his face and likeness, and asked for a criminal and technical investigation and removal of the content, including from mirror sites. Police registered a case under Sections 67 and 67A of the IT Act, several sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act. In the complaint he said the videos caused severe and irreparable harm to his reputation and personal and emotional distress to him and his family. He had already obtained an ad-interim injunction from the Hyderabad City Civil Court protecting his name, image and likeness (Gulf News); V6 Velugu reports that he had gone to that court in September 2025 over the same kind of deepfake videos and that on 26 September it ordered their removal. A September 2026 NewsX recap reports that Hyderabad Police Commissioner V C Sajjanar said the cybercrime team was working to trace those responsible.
Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownUnidentified image tool
SM Entertainment said on 28 September 2026 that illegal AI-generated images synthesising the likeness of YoonA (Im Yoon-ah), singer and actor of Girls' Generation, and false claims built on them had been made and spread on social media and online communities. Korean outlets describe images showing her apparently pregnant with a man placing a hand on her belly (his face blurred, per Star News). The agency said it had collected evidence from fan reports to its KWANGYA 119 channel and monitoring, had already filed a criminal complaint, and would respond without leniency or settlement, warning that making, posting or re-sharing the images could breach Korean defamation, portrait-rights and sexual-crime (false video) provisions.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026
12 Sept 2026 to 23 Sept 2026PakistanClaude (reported)
Pakistan's National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) announced on 23 September 2026 that it had arrested a 17-year-old college student in Bahawalpur for allegedly attempting to poison his father. According to the agency and the First Information Report, the teenager had set up a home laboratory, obtained chemicals from Australia and Islamabad, and once mixed laboratory-grade methanol into his father's food, without effect. The News reports investigators' account that on 12 September he told Anthropic's Claude that his father had 'accidentally' ingested 15 to 20 ml of methanol with food without effect and asked why, that Claude refused to guide him further, and that he then turned to Grok and ChatGPT; the FIR says he sought information about the toxin abrin. Anthropic reported the activity to the FBI, whose information reached the NCCIA through Pakistan's foreign ministry on 22 September. Officers traced the teenager, seized his phone and chemicals, and took him into custody. The News reports that a court later granted him bail after his father forgave him and that he denied any plan. The allegations are untested.
Core concern Medium reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026
Event date unknownUnited KingdomUnidentified image tool
The Colchester Gazette (24 September 2026, also carried by other Newsquest titles) reports that a 39-year-old man from Colchester admitted at Chelmsford Magistrates' Court three counts of making indecent images of children and one count of possessing an extreme pornographic image. Police had seized two mobile devices in a raid on his address the previous year, holding nearly 2,000 indecent images of children. The prosecutor said he had created 'deepfake sexually explicit images of people known to the defendant', taking photos from Facebook and other social-media accounts and using AI to create new images; some of the children were as young as 12 and nine and had been edited to look as young as five and six. Magistrates declined jurisdiction and he was bailed to be sentenced at Chelmsford Crown Court on 26 October 2026. The children are not identified and how many real children were depicted is not reported.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 29/09/2026
22 Sept 2026United StatesUnidentified image tool
David Douglas High School in Portland warned families in a statement reported on 28 September 2026 about social-media posts targeting its students, athletes, coaches and staff, saying some images and videos had been digitally altered, including with AI, and did not accurately represent those depicted; it reported some of the content to the Portland Police Bureau. KATU, which reviewed the account, reports 17 posts using racist, anti-immigrant and religious stereotypes against football players: one image shows a Latino player in a sombrero being detained by people labelled as ICE agents, another shows a player in a head covering with what appears to be a fake explosive vest, and a Black player is depicted beneath a caption referring to George Floyd. The head coach said students were hurt, and that one student texted him over the weekend after seeing one of the posts: 'Coach, this is terrible. What do I do?' The account references Rex Putnam High School, whose team David Douglas played on the Friday before the report; which along with its district says it has no connection to it. Who runs the account and which images were AI-generated are not reported.
Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources · Added 29/09/2026
Event date unknownUnited StatesUnidentified image and video tool
A Louisiana arrest warrant alleges that a man used AI, through an online website, to create nude images and a simulated sex video of a woman without her consent and showed them to her on his phone. Investigators say they reviewed the material she recorded and found AI-generated nude images. He was arrested in September 2026 on one count of unlawful deepfakes; the accusation has not been tried.
Core concern Medium reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026