20 Mar 2025 to 14 Nov 2025Event location unknownUnidentified image tool
The Amsterdam District Court said in March 2026 that a 34-year-old man was suspected of opening 47 bank accounts in other people's names between 20 March and 14 November 2025 by using deepfake technology to mislead a bank's identity-verification system. At the hearing on 17 March 2026, the prosecution said he had beaten ABN AMRO's app check, which compares a face scan with the photo on an identity document, by replacing ID photos with his own and by adjusting his own face photos to resemble the ID photos; the judge noted that a selfie submitted with one woman's identity document showed features of her passport photo. The prosecution said identity documents of the victims in whose names accounts were opened were found on his phone. The man denied knowing of the fraud before late September 2025, and the court reopened the investigation on 31 March to examine his phone data. According to AT5, on 17 June 2026 the court sentenced him to two and a half years in prison, six months of it suspended, and ordered him to pay 13,000 euros to ABN AMRO; AT5 reports that he pasted his victims' facial features onto his own face with AI and that some of the accounts were used for bank-helpdesk fraud and cash withdrawals.
Core concern Medium reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources · Added 26/10/2026
Jul 2020TaiwanUnidentified video tool
From July 2020 sexual videos showing the faces of Taiwanese politicians and influencers circulated online. Taiwan's Criminal Investigation Bureau said in October 2021 that the videos had been made by superimposing people's faces onto existing pornographic videos using deep learning technology; PTS describes the makers as a YouTuber with about a million subscribers and his assistant, who sold the videos. Prosecutors counted 119 victims, and the indictment, as reported by Taiwan's public broadcaster PTS, describes the misuse of AI synthesis technology (Deepfake). The New Taipei District Court convicted the pair in July 2022 under the Personal Data Protection Act on 119 counts; on the prosecutors' appeal the High Court increased the YouTuber's sentence, and the Supreme Court upheld it in May 2024, ruling that such videos harm the depicted people's reputation and mental health. In December 2025 the Supreme Court rejected his challenge to an aggregate term of six years and four months, as reported by the Liberty Times. Civil courts ordered the pair to pay NT$1 million each to two women in December 2022 and a total of NT$1.85 million to six women in December 2024.
Core concern High reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 6 sources · Added 26/10/2026
Event date unknownBrazilMicrosoft text-to-speech (reported)
A professional voice actor sued a São Paulo shopping centre, saying it used the actor's voice without authorisation in a marketing campaign shown on YouTube, and claimed lost earnings and moral damages. The centre answered that the voice was not the actor's but a synthetic voice produced with Microsoft's text-to-speech service, available to the public. According to the legal news site ConJur, a judge of the 18th Civil Court accepted that the voice was produced synthetically and dismissed the claim; on appeal the actor argued that a notarised record attesting to the similarity of the voices had never been assessed. The 6th Private Law Chamber of the São Paulo Court of Justice annulled that judgment for curtailment of the defence, holding that the use of AI does not by itself rule out misuse of third parties' rights, and sent the case back for evidence on how the campaign voice was generated and how similar it is to the actor's. The court docket shows the case back at first instance at the court-expert stage in 2025; no ruling on the merits is reported. Whether the AI voice reproduces the actor's voice is disputed.
Core concern Low reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution disputed · 2 sources · Added 26/10/2026
Jun 2024Event location unknownUnidentified face-swap and voice-synthesis tool
A CCTV News report of 29 September 2026 says the Hangzhou Internet Court in Zhejiang recently concluded a portrait-rights case brought by a beauty blogger. According to the report, from June 2024 an online skincare-sales company, without the blogger's consent, took short videos and livestream footage the blogger had published and used AI synthesis to make more than 30 fake videos in which the blogger appeared to promote its products. The court found that the company had used AI face swap and the recombination of image and sound tracks to fabricate the videos for commercial gain, infringing the blogger's portrait rights. In court the company acknowledged that it had synthesised and published the videos without the blogger's authorisation, said staff had made them out of fun and curiosity, and said it had taken them all down after receiving the lawsuit papers. The court ordered the company to pay 15,000 yuan for economic loss and the costs of protecting the blogger's rights and 5,000 yuan in compensation for emotional distress, and to publish an apology prominently on the platform concerned for at least 30 days. The blogger's claim that the products sold more than 100,000 orders was not accepted as proof of loss or profit.
Core concern Low reported severity Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 26/10/2026
20 Oct 2026Event location unknownUnidentified video tool (suspected)
On 20 October 2026, during early voting in Texas, a newly created X account posted two videos in which a man presented himself as a former student of James Talarico, the Democratic US Senate candidate and a former middle-school teacher, and accused him of sexual assault in 2012. The threat-intelligence firm Graphika said the account very likely impersonated a real Facebook user of the same name who had been Talarico's student and had praised him, assessed the videos as very likely deepfakes because the face moved unnaturally or out of sync with the audio and AI analysis tools indicated AI generation, and attributed them with high confidence to the Russia-aligned influence operation Storm-1516. PolitiFact reported that NewsGuard found many signs of AI generation and a 98 percent detector score, and that the real former student told the fact-checkers Lead Stories the video was not of him and denied accusing Talarico. Talarico's campaign said he was being slandered with AI deepfakes, foreign bots and conspiracy theories. PolitiFact rated the claim Pants on Fire. Who made the videos and how many people saw them is not established.
Core + contextual relations Medium reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement suspected · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources · Added 25/10/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownUnidentified voice-cloning and deepfake tool
The Nigeria Police Force National Cybercrime Centre (NPF-NCCC) said at a press briefing in Abuja on Friday 23 October 2026 that its operatives arrested three suspects in Lekki, Lagos State, on 14 October over alleged identity theft, investment fraud and money laundering. According to the centre's director, the suspects allegedly operated fake social media accounts impersonating prominent personalities to trick victims into transferring money, and were linked to a cryptocurrency investment scheme promoted through a website called Bitcoin Trading Hub. Investigators said one of the suspects used artificial intelligence voice cloning and deepfake technology to impersonate Tesla chief executive Elon Musk and communicate with victims, particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom. The police did not say how they established the AI use or which tools were involved, how many people were deceived or how much they lost. Seized devices were undergoing forensic examination to identify victims and trace the proceeds, and the three suspects remained in custody.
Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 25/10/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownRevoicer text-to-speech (reported)
Remie Michelle Clarke, a voiceover artist in Dublin, told Bloomberg Law in April 2023 and Marketplace in June 2023 that a synthetic voice built from recordings she had made for Microsoft's text-to-speech software was being sold by a third-party AI voice company, Revoicer, as a voice called Olivia that customers could make say anything. She said she learned of it when a fellow actor asked whether another voice job had paid her well, that she had since found a number of adverts and a couple of tech products using her voice, and that buyers choosing the AI voice was affecting her smaller jobs. She said she was completely shocked. Microsoft told Marketplace that it informs voice talent and obtains their legal consent to create synthetic voices; it did not address the resale. No response from Revoicer and no legal action are reported in the inspected sources.
Core concern Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 24/10/2026
Apr 2025ChinaUnidentified video tool
On 20 March 2026 the Beijing Internet Court announced a portrait-rights judgment over an online short drama in which, it found, the production company used deep-synthesis (AI face-swap) technology to generate an image highly similar to a well-known actress, according to Beijing Daily and a Sina Finance report drawing on it. In April 2025 internet users had questioned whether the drama had face-swapped a performer into the actress, and many believed she had appeared in it. The court found that two segments of the 44-episode, roughly 90-minute drama used AI face-swapping and that the face resembled the actress closely enough for the public to identify her. The maker argued that the image was generated by AI without any prompt relating to her and could not reproduce its process in court. The court held the maker liable for portrait-rights infringement and the broadcaster liable for failing to review the content, and ordered both to post written apologies on their video accounts and pay economic damages; neither appealed. The amount is not reported in the sources read.
Core concern Low reported severity Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution established · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 24/10/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownRevoicer text-to-speech (reported)
Greg Marston, a British voice actor, said in accounts published in 2023 that an AI-generated clone of his voice, built from a recording he had made for IBM years earlier, was being sold to websites that were using it to build a synthetic voice that could say anything. Julia Angwin's New York Times column (republished by the Oman Observer on 25 September 2023) says he found the clone, called Connor, online and heard his voice on the Wimbledon website during the tennis tournament; Cryptopolitan (1 July 2023) says he found it on Revoicer, an AI text-to-speech site. He had signed a release allowing the recording to be used in many ways, but said he never agreed to having his voice cloned to compete against him. He estimated that the clone had already lost him jobs and was working with a lawyer to seek compensation. IBM said it was aware of his concern and was discussing it with him. The outcome is not reported in the inspected sources.
Core concern Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 24/10/2026
Event date unknownUnited StatesUnidentified image and video tool
The Monitor (MyRGV) reports, citing a probable cause affidavit, that a Texas Department of Public Safety staff sergeant was arrested on 3 March 2025 on a charge of possession or promotion of child pornography after his wife handed investigators a hard drive she had found. According to the affidavit, the drive held images of girls under 18 with their genitals exposed that "had been deepfake", and a Texas Rangers investigator said it also held sexually explicit videos and pictures of current female DPS employees' faces modified using an artificial intelligence application. DPS suspended him with pay and opened an administrative investigation; he was released on a $300,000 bond. He is presumed innocent, and no later outcome was found.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources · Added 24/10/2026
Nov 2020Event location unknownTikTok text-to-speech
Canadian voice actor Bev Standing alleged in a May 2021 federal suit in New York that ByteDance's TikTok was using her voice, without permission or payment, as the female computer-generated voice of its text-to-speech feature, which lets users choose the words spoken over their videos. Her complaint says she discovered this in November 2020, that the voice came from recordings she had made for the Institute of Acoustics for work described as Chinese translations related to text-to-speech, and that some videos made the voice say foul and offensive language. About three weeks after she sued, users noticed a new female voice on the feature (CBC); TikTok did not comment and never confirmed that the original voice was hers. The case was dismissed in September 2021 after her lawyer reported a settlement, whose terms were not disclosed.
Core concern Low reported severity Lawsuit Settled
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 23/10/2026
2020United StatesLovo Genny (reported)
Voice-over actors Paul Lehrman and Linnea Sage allege in a proposed class action in the Southern District of New York that Lovo, a text-to-speech company, hired them through Fiverr in 2019 and 2020 for recordings it said were for internal research or test scripts, then used its AI software to make and sell clones of their voices under the names "Kyle Snow" and "Sally Coleman". According to the complaint as recounted by the court, they learned of it when they heard a podcast narrated in part by a Lovo-generated voice that they say was identical to Lehrman's, and Lovo answered their cease-and-desist letter by saying the characters were created from those recordings and that its use was "fully permissioned". On 10 July 2025 Judge J. Paul Oetken dismissed most federal trademark and copyright claims but let their New York Civil Rights Law, consumer-protection and contract claims, and Sage's copyright claim over her original recording, proceed. The case was stayed on 28 May 2026 after Lovo filed a suggestion of bankruptcy. The allegations have not been tested at trial.
Core concern Low reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 23/10/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownMeta AI support assistant (reported)
In a Reddit post on 22 October 2026, a person says their personal Facebook account was banned and that it was the only administrator of their company's Facebook page. Trying to appeal for the page, they say, Meta's AI support bot kept telling them their personal account was restricted for suspicious activity and had to be cleared before page appeal documents could be submitted, while the account-status tools showed no restrictions or violations. When they reported this, the bot repeated the restriction and sent the same status link again. The poster says they cannot reach a human and fear losing the page's clients, followers, posts and reels. Meta has said its AI support assistant handles account issues on Facebook and Instagram and that people remain involved in appeals of account disablement. The account is uncorroborated.
Core concern Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources · Added 23/10/2026
1 Oct 2026United StatesUnidentified video tool
In early October 2026 the campaign of Scott Colom, the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in Mississippi, posted on social media a 19-second AI-generated video showing a woman made to look like his opponent, Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, running from a crowd of reporters at the U.S. Capitol and getting into a car. Local outlets report that the post called it "based on a true story" and did not disclose that it was made with AI. Hyde-Smith's campaign manager called it an AI video and part of a campaign of "lies and deception". On 22 October the Mississippi Republican Party asked the state Attorney General to investigate whether the video broke a state law against knowingly spreading a deceptive AI depiction of a candidate within 90 days of an election, and to seek an injunction. Colom's campaign manager defended the campaign's use of AI and called the complaint desperate; the law exempts satire and parody. On Friday 23 October Attorney General Lynn Fitch said she had notified the campaign that its AI-generated ads appeared to violate the state law against political deepfakes and asked that they be removed that afternoon, or her office might seek an injunction. Colom called the video parody but said the campaign would delete the post rather than spend donors' money on litigation, and by that afternoon two Mississippi stations reported that it no longer appeared on the campaign's Facebook page. No court has ruled on whether the video broke the law.
Core concern Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 7 sources, 5 underlying accounts · Added 23/10/2026
21 Oct 2026SpainUnidentified video tool
During the campaign for Spain's 29 November general election, the Partido Popular (PP) posted on its official social media accounts on 21 October 2026 a video made with artificial intelligence, labelled as AI content, that parodies a PSOE campaign video. It shows AI-generated likenesses of the prime minister's wife Begoña Gómez, former prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, former minister José Luis Ábalos, former PSOE officials Santos Cerdán and Montse Mínguez and former party member Leire Díez, with imitated voices, each appearing to confess alleged crimes or irregular conduct. PSOE sources told Europa Press the party was studying legal action over the video, which elDiario.es and Cadena SER describe as impersonating these people, and PSOE's organisation secretary said the PP had nothing to offer but insults. PP spokespeople defended the video, saying it was clearly recognisable as AI. Europa Press reported more than a million views on X. By 23 October 2026 Leire Díez, one of the people depicted, had filed a criminal complaint (querella) against the PP for alleged defamation with publicity, offences against moral integrity and digital identity impersonation, asking for the video's provisional removal; Europa Press reports it was sent to the Madrid courts at Plaza de Castilla and El País that it was filed at the Audiencia Nacional. The complaint says the video uses artificial intelligence and her image and voice to accuse her of a serious crime, that its statements are false, that it had more than 21 million views, and that she and her daughters have had to isolate at home and she suffered an anxiety attack. Jurists consulted by El País considered a criminal case unlikely to succeed given the latitude for political satire and the video's AI label. On 28 October 2026 the prime minister said in a podcast interview that his wife, Begoña Gómez, had filed a complaint over the video for impersonation of her image; RTVE and El Periódico, which say they had access to the filing, report that it is directed at whoever runs the PP's official social-media profiles and anyone in the party who instructed them, asks that PP secretary general Miguel Tellado testify, and says she never said those words, took no part in the video and did not consent to the use of her image or voice. The PP answered on social media with irony.
Core concern Medium reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 8 sources, 7 underlying accounts · Added 23/10/2026
15 Nov 2022 to 27 May 2023Event location unknownUnidentified video tool
On 26 September 2025 the Federal Court of Australia ordered a man to pay civil penalties of A$343,500 plus costs, in what the eSafety Commissioner said was the first proceeding to impose a civil penalty under the Online Safety Act 2021. On facts he admitted, he posted 12 non-consensual deepfake intimate images of six women ordinarily resident in Australia to a deepfake website between November 2022 and May 2023. He made each one by uploading a photo of the woman found online to a webpage that created semi-naked or naked images and saving the generated image. He refused eSafety's removal notice, so two images stayed online for almost a year, and he admitted posting some later images in retaliation against people involved in issuing the notice. Each woman complained to eSafety, and the court found the posts were likely to have caused them hurt and distress. The eSafety Commissioner called this kind of deepfake abuse a misuse of easily accessible AI tools.
Core concern High reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 5 sources · 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
20 Apr 2023ChinaUnidentified video tool
Police in Baotou, Inner Mongolia, said in a statement published in May 2023 that on 20 April 2023 the legal representative of a technology company in Fuzhou, Fujian, received a WeChat video call from someone who appeared to be a friend and asked to route a 4.3 million yuan tender deposit through the company's account; trusting the video call, he transferred 4.3 million yuan in two payments. The police said the fraudster had used AI face-swapping to pose as the friend. At Fuzhou police's request, Baotou police and a local bank stopped 3.3684 million yuan within about ten minutes; 931,600 yuan had been moved on and was being pursued.
Core concern High reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources · Added 22/10/2026
27 Apr 2023ChinaUnidentified video tool
In April 2023 a man in the Anqing economic development zone, Anhui, received a brief WeChat video call from someone who appeared to be an acquaintance, followed by a QQ message asking him to advance money for a tender; trusting the video call, he had family members transfer 2.45 million yuan. The local police anti-fraud centre found that the fraudsters had used a nine-second AI face-swap video to pose as the acquaintance, Dawan News reported. Police arrested three suspects on 28 April, froze or recovered more than one million yuan, and on 22 May returned 1.32 million yuan to the victim.
Core concern High reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 22/10/2026
Nov 2025South KoreaUnidentified image tool
The Seoul Southern District Court on 11 September 2026 fined a male official in his fifties at a Seoul district office a total of 6 million won for making and posting false images and for defamation, according to Korean reports of the ruling. Under the charges, in November 2025 he took a photo of a female colleague in his department from the office's organisation chart, used generative AI to composite it into pictures that made them look like a couple, and posted them four times on his social media profile. The judge cited the colleague's statement that she felt shame, insult and disgust, and that rumours had spread at work. Police had initially found no offence before the case was sent back to prosecutors. Both he and the prosecution appealed, and the Seoul city personnel committee voted to dismiss him.
Core concern Medium reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 22/10/2026