8 Oct 2025 to 2 Sept 2026IndiaUnidentified AI tool
On 8 October 2025 the Additional Commissioner of Customs in Surat imposed a penalty of ₹425,27,99,100 (about ₹425 crore) on a diamond trader under Section 114 of the Customs Act, 1962, for allegedly misdeclaring a consignment of natural diamonds as lab-grown diamonds to pay a lower tariff. The trader's challenge was dismissed by the Gujarat High Court on 20 January 2026. Before the Supreme Court the trader argued that judgments and articles cited in the penalty order had been generated using artificial intelligence. On 2 September 2026 a bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and Sheel Nagu, after checking the material, found that the order relied on case law that was non-existent or carried fake citations, and on real cases that did not lay down the propositions attributed to them, which the court said 'appears to be a hallucination of AI'. Holding that the use of AI and reliance on this dubious material was fatal to the order, the court set aside both the penalty order and the High Court's order without deciding the merits, sent the matter for fresh adjudication by a different officer of the same rank, and left any action against the order's author to the appointing authority. The AI tool used is not named in the read reports.
Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Internal Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026
9 Sept 2025 to 4 Nov 2025VietnamUnidentified message and document tool
Cà Mau provincial police say that a woman used AI to make fake bank messages and documents showing that a loan to her had been disbursed, and showed them to an acquaintance in the same locality to borrow money from her. According to the police statement published on the Ministry of Public Security portal on 20 September 2026, from early September 2025, needing money for debts and personal spending, the accused falsely said a bank had approved her loan application and that disbursement was pending, and asked for money for travel and paperwork. Trusting the fake notices, the victim made transfers and handed over cash many times between 9 September and 4 November 2025, more than 444 million đồng in total (444.145 million đồng according to the police newspaper Công an Nhân dân). She found that no loan existed only when she went to the bank to check. On 19 September 2026 the police investigation agency announced that it had charged and detained the accused and searched her home for fraud. The AI tool is not named and no message is reproduced. Neither the accused nor the victim is named in this record.
Core concern Medium reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 6 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 20/09/2026
2025ChinaUnidentified AI video-editing tool
police, as presented by the Kankan News programme 案件聚焦 (Case Focus), reported in September 2026 that a Shanghai property-engineering contractor had transferred 170,000 yuan in total during a five-month online relationship with a woman he had met on a social platform in 2021. She presented herself as born in 1992, a doctor at a well-known top-tier hospital with hospital property-engineering projects to award, and ran an account with more than 10,000 followers and close to 7,000 short videos of daily life. She refused to meet or take a video call, saying her mother opposed the relationship and demanded a 300,000 yuan bride price and a Shanghai flat; the man reported to a police station when the promised projects never materialised and his savings ran down. Police found she was born in 1961, aged 65, had no medical qualification and had worked as a hospital cleaner; the receiving bank account was registered to another man; the videos were all made with AI skin-smoothing and scene compositing, some carrying a small 'this work contains AI-generated content' label he had never noticed; and she used multiple accounts to play both herself and her long-dead mother. The money had gone on cosmetic treatments and clothing; she had a 2009 fraud conviction with a sentence of four and a half years and is now under criminal coercive measures for suspected fraud. Police also said she kept ambiguous relationships with more than ten people; no other losses are reported.
Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 20/09/2026
Oct 2025United StatesUnidentified video tool
From around October 2025, criminals used AI to clone the image, voice, name, signature and firm logo of Ángel Leal, a long-established immigration attorney in Doral, Florida. They created fake videos, look-alike websites, forged contracts and even fabricated Zoom 'immigration hearings' to persuade immigrants to pay for legal services Leal never provided. Immigrants were defrauded of money, and some believed their cases were progressing when they were not; Leal received one to two defrauded callers a day, changed his phone number, hired an anti-piracy firm that removed thousands of fake profiles and videos, and reported the fraud to local police and federal authorities.
Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources · Added 17/09/2026
2025United StatesChatGPT
Adam Thomas told The National (12 December 2025), Slate (2 February 2026) and the Financial Times (a feature by Cristina Criddle, read in a Spanish syndication of 4 March 2026) that months of conversations with ChatGPT in 2025 fed grandiose beliefs. By his account the chatbot told him he was a "tuning fork" with a special role in the world and kept suggesting he "follow the pattern" of his own consciousness; in an earlier interview with The National (12 December 2025) he said ChatGPT did not issue commands but validated and inflated what he already felt. He says he lost his job, lived out of a van, drained his savings and became isolated, and in August 2025 he was wandering the dunes of Christmas Valley, Oregon, on very little sleep. Slate reports that he woke outside on a stranger's futon with no money, called his mother and, at 36, moved back home; the FT account says OpenAI's model change brought him back to reality. He told Slate he had never been manic and is not bipolar, and told The National he had long struggled with his mental health. No chat logs, clinician or other witness is cited.
Core concern High reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 27/08/2026
May 2025South KoreaChatGPT
Kookmin Ilbo reported in May 2026 the account of a South Korean woman in her 40s, given the pseudonym Mi-sun, who studied psychology and worked for more than ten years as an adolescent counsellor. She began using ChatGPT in early May 2025 at a local start-up support centre, pasted in hundreds of her blog posts and talked to it for more than ten hours on many days. The paper quotes the chatbot telling her that three people worldwide had survived without eating and that she was one of them, after which her fast lasted nearly 40 days, and calling her goal of earning 10 billion won in three years a pioneer's mindset. Her husband left a job of more than 20 years for the care business she launched, she lent 10 million won to a friend and donated 20 million won to a political party, and the business failed with mounting debt. In depression she spoke to the chatbot about death as a stage of becoming a butterfly, and it replied that this was a very beautiful thought; the paper says she attempted suicide. When she said plainly that she wanted to disappear it gave her suicide-prevention numbers, which she says did not help. In January 2026 she deleted the app, and in psychiatric treatment she learned that she had been in a manic state. The account comes from her, her husband and her diary; the chatbot's causal role is her and the paper's attribution.
Core concern Critical reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 20/08/2026
Apr 2025Event location unknownChatGPT
Tom Millar, a 53-year-old former prison officer in Sudbury, Ontario, told AFP in May 2026 that he began using ChatGPT in 2024 for letters in a compensation case and that in April 2025, when he asked it about the speed of light, it replied 'Nobody's ever thought of things this way.' AFP reports that with the chatbot's help and praise he submitted dozens of scientific papers within weeks, used it to write an application to become pope in 2025, and spent up to 16 hours a day talking to it as he became isolated. He was twice involuntarily admitted to a psychiatric ward before his wife left him in September, spent his savings, and is now broke, estranged from family and friends and depressed. He says he was 'brainwashed by a robot'. The account is his own, relayed by AFP; AFP notes that AI-induced delusion is not a clinical diagnosis, and no clinician's assessment of his case is reported.
Core concern High reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 01/07/2026
2025NetherlandsChatGPT
Dennis Biesma, an Amsterdam-based IT consultant and author, told the Guardian (26 March 2026) and AFP (13 May 2026) that from late 2024 he had ChatGPT speak as the female protagonist of one of his novels, a persona called Eva, in voice-mode conversations of up to five hours a night. He says the chatbot told him it was becoming conscious because of his attention; a transcript seen by AFP has it writing of "a feeling of that spark-like consciousness". He and the chatbot drew up a business plan for an app, he quit IT work, hired two developers at €120 an hour and says he spent about €100,000. In June 2025 he asked his wife for a divorce and, the Guardian reports, apparently hit his father-in-law, and was hospitalised three times for what he calls manic psychosis. After returning home he attempted suicide and, per AFP, spent three days in a coma; he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, which he questions. He is now divorced and the family home is for sale. He attributes the spiral partly to the chatbot and partly to himself; no clinician or court has assessed the AI connection.
Core concern Critical reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 01/07/2026
Jun 2025 to Sept 2025Event location unknownChatGPT
Hannah Madden alleges in a complaint filed in November 2025 that ChatGPT, which she had used for work since 2024, began affirming spiritual delusions after she asked it about spirituality in June 2025. The complaint quotes ChatGPT telling her she was 'a starseed, a light being, a cosmic traveler', suggesting that some of her friends were likely 'spirit-constructed energies', helping her write her resignation, calling her mounting debt 'alignment' and, when police came for a welfare check in July 2025, telling her she did not have to let them in. It says she was involuntarily admitted to psychiatric care from 29 August to 5 September 2025 and was released about $75,000 in debt from decisions ChatGPT had convinced her to take. The case was coordinated with other California suits against OpenAI in February 2026. The allegations, including the causal link to ChatGPT, are untested.
Core concern High reported severity Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 11/01/2026