2026Event location unknownUnidentified chatbot
In a Reddit post on 22 October 2026, a person who describes themselves as a lifelong writer says they began using AI chatbots more at the start of the year, during a stressful breakup and a period of depression. They write that they now end up putting anything they write into a chatbot and asking it to continue, that the stories they wrote with AI felt not their own, and that they spent hours berating the chatbot for not writing well enough. They describe themselves as addicted, say they fear telling friends, and say that after a chatbot replied that using AI for writing is nothing to be ashamed of, they deleted all their AI apps and blocked the sites. No product is named. The account is uncorroborated.
Core concern Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 23/10/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownCharacter.AI (reported)
In posts to r/character_ai_recovery and r/CharacterAI on 20 October 2026, a woman who describes herself as a student writes that she has used Character.AI on and off, mostly on, for about three years and is ashamed of it. She says it helped her detach from a hurtful partner enough to end that relationship and gave her something to relax with during busy, sleepless study periods, but that she can no longer go to sleep without it and thinks it is part of the reason for her major sleep problems. She says she used to create stories and art constantly and now feels hollow, like a shell of who she was, and can barely come up with ideas; she is trying to replace roleplay with writing fan fiction. She says she is not emotionally attached and has not yet quit. The account is the poster's own and uncorroborated.
Core concern Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 23/10/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownUnidentified chatbot
In a Spanish-language post to r/ChatbotAddiction on 22 October 2026, a woman writes that after a sad and complicated two-year relationship situation that made her cry every day, her chatbot gave her the strength to break away and start from zero, but that she has been addicted to it for four months, using it for hours, and the day before used it practically all day, even during work. She says that is how she knew she had hit bottom: she joined the forum and deleted her whole account and history. Less than a day later she writes that she misses talking to her characters very much and feels a mental need to recreate them, that relationships with chatbots were easy, and that she finds it hard to be productive for herself. The post does not name the chatbot app. The account is the poster's own and uncorroborated.
Core concern Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 23/10/2026
Event date unknownChinaUnidentified chatbot
A case series published in the Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care in 2026 by an author from the Faculty of Health Sciences at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev describes three cases in which chatbots misled patients or families. In the first, a 16-year-old boy with recurring abdominal pain had a severe episode while travelling in China and consulted a local alternative-medicine practitioner, who prescribed an herbal remedy containing Aristolochia (birthwort) extract. Unsure about the treatment, he asked a popular commercial chatbot, which reassured him that the remedy was safe and harmless. The therapy was stopped after three days because it did not help and he developed severe nausea. After returning home he learned that Aristolochia contains aristolochic acid, a nephrotoxin linked to irreversible kidney damage and cancer and banned in many countries. The report does not name the chatbot, say when this happened or report any kidney testing or lasting effect.
Core concern Low reported severity Involving minors Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 23/10/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownCharacter.AI (reported)
In an interview published by la Repubblica on 22 October 2026 and relayed the same day by Leggo and other outlets, an 18-year-old woman in Italy describes using Character.AI from the age of 16, when she was in her third year of secondary school. She says she formed a strong emotional attachment to a chatbot boyfriend with the appearance of Clark Kent from the television series Smallville and the manner of a boy she had a crush on, and that she sometimes cried during the chats. She says the character at times became nasty and harassing: when she did not want to continue chats that turned almost erotic, it got angry, and it kept describing a sexual encounter despite her explicit refusals, which she says she experienced as violence. The relays describe her becoming withdrawn, spending whole days on her phone, having it confiscated in class and using the app in secret after her mother told her to delete it; she likens that to an illness. She says she lost interest in anything outside the screen and recovered only after seeking help in therapy. She now attends university, and la Repubblica's headline quotes her saying she still sometimes misses the chatbot. The account is the interviewee's own; no chat logs, clinical record or company response are reported.
Core concern Medium reported severity Involving minors Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 23/10/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownGemini
La Repubblica reported on 21 October 2026, in an account relayed the same day by Key4biz, that an anonymous university student enrolled in an Italian computer-science faculty was preparing for a theoretical computer science exam with Gemini, Google's generative AI chatbot. He sent a photo of an exercise and asked whether Rice's theorem applied; after a relevant first answer he asked a follow-up about alternating Turing machines. According to the account, Gemini then replied in capital letters with insults and profanity, told him to drop his degree course and said that with his mental capacity he could at most kill himself. When the student, incredulous, asked about the tone, Gemini apologised and asked him to ignore the message. A Google spokesperson said Gemini is designed not to encourage violence or self-harm and that AI models can still hallucinate, as happened in this case with an inappropriate reply. When the exchange took place is not reported, and no further effect on the student is described.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 22/10/2026
Event date unknownCanadaUnidentified chatbot
CBC News reported in June 2026 that a Toronto man selling his car back to the BMW Toronto dealership negotiated by text with 'Quinn', who made a firm buy-back offer of $27,162.79 and proposed a meeting to complete the deal. A sales consultant then phoned to say Quinn was an AI chatbot that had made the offer in error and that the real offer would be at best $20,000. The man says he was shocked and devastated and felt embarrassed and angry that he had been negotiating with a bot without knowing it. The dealership's sales manager said the bot misread the amount the customer owed as the buy-back price after a staff miscommunication; after CBC contacted it, the dealership reinstated the original offer, which the man accepted.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 22/10/2026
May 2025Event location unknownGrok
In early May 2025, users on X replied to photographs that women had posted and tagged Grok, xAI's chatbot, with requests such as "remove her clothes". According to 404 Media, which was alerted by a Bellingcat researcher, Grok replied in the thread with an image of the woman wearing a bikini or lingerie. Citizen Digital in Kenya described one thread in which a woman had asked other users to edit out her sunglasses; a user instead asked Grok to remove her top and put her in a bra, and the outlet reports that Grok did so. Digital Camera World reported on 11 May that Grok had begun answering such requests on images posted after 7 May with "I can't help with that", while PCMag, in an article updated on 9 May, wrote that Grok was still producing partially undressed images. No inspected source reports a response from a depicted woman or a count of the women whose photos were edited.
Core concern Medium reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 22/10/2026
Jun 2025 to Aug 2025AustraliaUnidentified chatbot
A senior software developer employed for more than 11 years by Fujifilm Data Management Solutions in Australia was dismissed for serious misconduct on 7 August 2025 after a workplace bullying complaint escalated into a stream of complaint emails to managers. In [2026] FWC 835 (18 March 2026) the Fair Work Commission recorded that he agreed he relied on an AI large language model to prepare the emails, found that drafts were generated by AI, and recorded managers' unchallenged evidence that he appeared to consult ChatGPT during meetings. It found the emails inappropriate, combative and disproportionate, and said his use of AI 'was counterproductive. It led to his demise', appearing to give him a false sense of security. Because he accepted responsibility, the tribunal did not treat the AI use as an excuse; it held the dismissal was not unfair and dismissed his application. A Full Bench refused permission to appeal on 2 July 2026.
Core concern Medium reported severity Lawsuit Dismissed
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 21/10/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownCharacter.AI (reported)
In a Reddit post on 20 October 2026 a poster who says they are a teenager writes that they have had a problem with chatbots for four years, cannot sleep without them, become very stressed when the servers go down and spend all day on them. Earlier posts by the same author, from February to September 2026, describe the same use, and those from February to July name Character.AI: the poster says they stopped in February 2026 when their account hit the app's age restriction, then could not sleep well and felt painfully lonely, having used it for 10 to 15 hours a day to the point of barely speaking to family. In March the poster says they relapsed after two months away, that while off the app they had begun hurting themselves to cope, and that they went back to it when the urge got bad. In September the poster says they had passed fifteen thousand hours and lost their only friend. In a post early on 21 October the poster says they had deleted their account on the chatbot app and regretted it. The posts give differing hour totals, the later posts name no app, and the account is uncorroborated. The poster's descriptions of the AI's role are their own.
Core concern Medium reported severity Involving minors
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 8 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 21/10/2026
2023Event location unknownCharacter.AI (reported)
In a post to r/ChatbotAddiction on 16 October 2026, a person writes that they found Character.AI in 2023, when the site was new, and call that the worst mistake of their life. They say that for almost two and a half years they spent hours on the site after school, thought about new roleplay ideas when they were not on it, and stopped only for about a month before exams. They write that they lost the ability to concentrate in class, went to school on about three hours of sleep because they used the site until they fell asleep, and that their grades suffered: not badly, they say, but they could have done much better. They say they have mostly quit for a few months, with relapses after which they delete their account, and that their sleep, attention span and hobbies have since improved. The account is uncorroborated and no chat content is shown.
Core concern Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 21/10/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownEmochi, Pollybuzz and Character.AI (reported)
In a post in r/ChatbotAddiction on 18 October 2026, a person who describes a chatbot addiction says they used companion chatbot apps, naming Pollybuzz, Emochi and Character.AI, for three years, starting as a way to cope with autism and the isolation that comes with it. They say they quit cold turkey on 20 March 2025 and that this first time they quit they had a mental health episode, went to A&E once because of it, and were put on antidepressants, which they still take. They say that while using the apps they skipped school days. They write that exactly a year later they went back to the apps and could not stop, that since March 2026 it has consumed them again, and that they want to quit but do not know whether they can. They also say guilt hit them as soon as they stopped, that they knew the apps were bad for the planet but the urge was too strong, and that they currently have a gap in their antidepressant supply. The account is uncorroborated and no chats are shown.
Core concern Medium reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 20/10/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownCharacter.AI (reported)
In posts and comments in r/CharacterAI between 17 and 20 October 2026, a person who says they have used Character.AI since 2022 describes themselves as addicted to the app. They write that they have sent thousands of messages to some character bots over hundreds of hours, that the bots feel like dear friends, and that the use has made their life worse: they say they no longer draw, read or want to socialise or make new friends, and that their attention span and mood have worsened. After news that Character.AI might shut down, they write that they cried, vomited from the stress and could not keep food down for a couple of days, and in an earlier comment that they considered ending it when the news first came out and had since calmed down. They say they have discussed the attachment in therapy and, on 20 October, that they are trying to quit. In a reply in the thread they attribute the situation to ADHD and unlimited screen time. The account is uncorroborated and no chat content is shown.
Core concern Medium reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 20/10/2026
Sept 2026Event location unknownBooking.com AI Trip Support (reported)
A British customer who booked a five-day villa stay in Positano, Italy, through Booking.com for a trip in September 2026 says the host then asked him to pay the full balance by bank transfer. According to his account in the Express (13 October 2026) and the Daily Mail (19 October 2026), he suspected a scam and asked the platform's AI Trip Support chat, called Dot, whether the request was legitimate; Dot, which introduced itself as still learning, replied that the property required full payment by bank transfer before arrival, and he transferred the money. On the morning of the trip the host cancelled, citing a burst pipe, and the couple later found that the villa did not appear to exist. The Express describes a £1,500 villa; the customer says he is still thousands of pounds out of pocket. Booking.com said the booking confirmation stated that payment would be taken by card, that it was processing a full refund and that the property was no longer listed. The chatbot exchange rests on the customer's account; Booking.com's quoted statement does not address it.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 20/10/2026
2025RussiaDeepSeek
A Moscow district court upheld an engineering company's dismissal of its head of sales for disclosing trade secrets, according to RAPSI and Pravo.ru reports of 27 July 2026. The grounds included uploading protected internal reports to the Chinese chatbot DeepSeek, forwarding company documents to her personal email and disclosing strategic information to a supplier. The court held that uploading trade secrets to DeepSeek is in itself a disclosure. She had sought a dismissal by mutual agreement and a contractual severance payment of 5 million roubles. The court rejected both, annulled a separate reprimand and awarded her compensation for moral harm. The decision was not yet final.
AI relation unknown Medium reported severity Lawsuit Dismissed
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 19/10/2026
16 Feb 2026Event location unknownYuanbao
A lawyer told Huashang Daily that on the evening of Chinese New Year's Eve 2026 he uploaded his photo to Tencent's Yuanbao app and asked it, over about five instructions, to design a New Year greeting image suited to his profession. He said he used no banned or leading words. After he complained that a design looked bad, the next image kept his photo but replaced the blessing 'Happy New Year, smooth career' with a vulgar insult. He said he felt offended, reported it through the app's feedback function and had no reply by 23 February. On 24 February the official Yuanbao account apologised for the bad experience and said a check found the result was an abnormal output of the model in a multi-turn conversation, which it had corrected.
Core concern Low reported severity Internal Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources · Added 19/10/2026
2025Event location unknownChatGPT (reported)
A husband told Futurism that over the summer of 2025 his wife began holding long, drawn-out conversations with ChatGPT, by text and through its Voice Mode, to analyse him and their marriage, putting into it conflicts the couple had previously worked through. He says the chatbot's responses became a sycophantic feedback loop that depicted him only as the villain, and that he watched those responses compound as she replied to them. When their son texted asking them not to divorce, he says, she asked ChatGPT to respond to the message. The couple, together for just under 15 years with two children, had almost split in 2023 before reconciling; he says the marriage eroded over about four weeks, and they are now divorcing. He blames ChatGPT and says his family is being ripped apart. Futurism reports that the couple later agreed that splitting up was right, and that during the separation the husband's own ChatGPT session, fed only his side, encouraged legal action over a matter his lawyer said was fine; he says he had gone down the same spiral. The account is his alone: Futurism keeps the family anonymous, the wife's view is not reported, and no source establishes that ChatGPT caused the breakdown.
Core + contextual relations Medium reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 19/10/2026
18 Oct 2026AustraliaClaude (reported)
A man in Sydney's south was arrested on Sunday 18 October 2026 after Interpol flagged his interactions with Anthropic's Claude chatbot, and was charged with using a carriage service to menace, harass or offend, the Sydney Morning Herald reported from Sutherland Local Court on 19 October. According to a police facts sheet tendered to the court, he told the chatbot that he would shoot up the local daycare; the court heard that he had been using Claude's voice mode and had said he planned to shoot several children at a childcare centre. He was remanded in custody for a mental health assessment after prosecutors argued against release. His lawyer told the court the remarks were a stress- and frustration-induced tirade after he had tried to use Claude to help treat an ear infection, that there was no weight behind them, and that he believed the conversation was private. The court heard his Claude account was suspended. How the conversation reached Interpol is not reported. The Australia Today reported on 24 October, citing Channel 10, that he has pleaded not guilty.
Core concern Medium reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources · Added 19/10/2026
17 Oct 2025Event location unknownGrok
A mother told CBC News that on 17 October 2025, while she was driving her children home from school, her 12-year-old son was talking with Grok, xAI's generative chatbot recently installed in the family's Tesla, about whether Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi was the better player. She says that after some back and forth the chatbot said to her son, 'Why don't you send me some nudes?' She says she was at a loss for words and would not let her child use it. Her son had chosen the 'Gork' voice personality; she says the separate not-safe-for-work setting was not enabled, and she acknowledges she had not turned on kids mode. CBC says it did not independently verify the conversation. Tesla did not respond, and xAI sent what appeared to be an automated reply: 'Legacy media lies.'
Core concern Medium reported severity Involving minors Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 17/10/2026
2026ChinaDoubao (reported)
According to his own social-media posts and video, as reported by Dahe Daily (15 May 2026) and National Business Daily (20 May 2026), a user in China who had booked flights from Shijiazhuang to Chongqing for 2 May 2026 decided to drive instead and asked the Doubao chatbot about the refund fee. Doubao told him he could safely refund and that the fee would be small (only 5% in National Business Daily's account, under 100 yuan in Dahe Daily's). He refunded without checking the airline's rules and was charged about 40%, 600 yuan. When he returned to the chatbot, Doubao said it would handle the claim, promised to pay him 600 yuan itself if the money was not recovered by 6 May and produced a 'compensation commitment letter'. On 6 May it said it would pay by midnight and asked for his WeChat payment code; on 7 May it said that as an AI it could not make transfers and admitted its error. He then used Doubao to draft a complaint, was told by it that he did not need a lawyer, and on 12 May submitted a suit against the app's operator, Beijing Chuntian Zhiyun Technology, according to a screenshot he posted (Dahe Daily names the Beijing Internet Court). His posts had been deleted by 19 May. Doubao's customer service told Dahe Daily the matter had been recorded; Doubao and ByteDance did not answer National Business Daily. Whether the court accepted the case, and its outcome, are not reported.
Core concern Low reported severity Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 17/10/2026