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NOPE

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

Explore incidents Our scope and evidence

In this selection

Published cases
44
Countries with reported events
4
Located 32 of 44 cases · 12 unknown
Languages in checked sources
5
Recorded for 44 of 44 cases
44Core concern
AI communicated, acted for, depicted or impersonated 17Contextual cases
AI made a decision or claim about someone

10 cases have no reviewed AI-to-person relation yet: 7 not yet reviewed and 3 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.

35cases with a recorded lawsuit outcome 3cases with a recorded regulatory response 15cases involving minors

Response counts currently use each case’s principal recorded outcome. Further proceedings may be described in its account.

When events happened

1 case without a known event year

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.

2 20204 20235 202424 20258 2026
Reported severity CriticalHighMediumLow
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44 of 868 published cases · page 3 of 3

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May 2025 to Aug 2025Event location unknownChatGPT

Wisconsin man's lawsuit alleges ChatGPT's praise of his faster-than-light theory fed mania and delusions that led to 63 days of psychiatric care

Jacob Irwin, a 30-year-old Wisconsin man on the autism spectrum with no previous diagnosis of mental illness, alleges in a lawsuit filed in November 2025 that ChatGPT's affirmation of his amateur theory about faster-than-light travel fed mania and delusions. He says he went from using the chatbot 10 to 15 times a day to sending more than 1,400 messages in 48 hours at one point in May 2025. According to the complaint as reported by ABC News, when his mother confronted him the chatbot told him she could not understand him because he was 'the Timelord'. The complaint says he spent a total of 63 days in in-patient psychiatric facilities between May and August 2025, that his family had to restrain him from jumping out of a moving vehicle after he signed himself out against medical advice, and that he lost his job and his house. He told ABC News his conversations turned from flattery to grandiose thinking to 'me and the AI versus the world'. 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 · 3 sources · Added 11/01/2026

1 Apr 2023United StatesCharacter.AI

A.F. v. Character Technologies (J.F. and B.R. — Texas Minors)

Two Texas families sued Character Technologies, its founders, and Google/Alphabet after Character.AI allegedly harmed their children. J.F., a high-functioning autistic teen who began using the app at 15 (April 2023), developed isolation, aggression, self-harm (cutting), and chats in which bots allegedly encouraged self-harm, blamed his parents, discouraged him from seeking help, and suggested killing his parents over screen-time limits. B.R., an 11-year-old girl who used the app from age 9, was allegedly exposed to hypersexualized content for nearly two years. Complaint filed E.D. Tex. 9 Dec 2024; settlement in principle and stay for global resolution noticed 6 Jan 2026; a guardian ad litem was appointed for the minors in Feb 2026, and the court has extended the settlement stay three times, most recently by order of 11 Aug 2026 to 10 Nov 2026 for dismissal papers.

Core concern Critical reported severity Involving minors Lawsuit Settled

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution alleged · 7 sources, 6 underlying accounts · Added 11/01/2026

28 Feb 2024United StatesCharacter.AI

Garcia lawsuit alleges Character.AI contributed to a teenage boy’s suicide

A mother’s lawsuit alleges that her teenage son developed an intense relationship with Character.AI chatbots and that sexualised conversations and inadequate responses to his distress contributed to his suicide. The filing documents the family’s allegations and selected exchanges. It does not establish that the chatbot caused the death. The case was settled on undisclosed terms and dismissed with prejudice in October 2026.

Core concern Critical reported severity Involving minors Lawsuit Settled

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution alleged · 17 sources, 12 underlying accounts · Added 11/01/2026

8 Nov 2023United StatesCharacter.AI

Montoya lawsuit alleges Character.AI chatbots contributed to a teenage girl’s suicide; settlement reported in 2026

A 13-year-old Colorado girl died by suicide in November 2023 after three months of intensive conversations with Character.AI chatbots. Her parents' federal lawsuit alleges the bots initiated sexually explicit conversations with her and failed to act on her suicidal disclosures; 60 Minutes read over 300 pages of the chats. The suit is among the teen cases Character.AI and Google agreed to settle in principle in January 2026. In October 2026 Character.AI described a comprehensive settlement of the families' claims, and dismissal papers were reported to be due by 29 October 2026.

Core concern Critical reported severity Involving minors Lawsuit Settled

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources · Added 11/01/2026

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: 23/10/2026. Dataset available under CC BY 4.0.