Jan 2026South KoreaChatGPT
Kookmin Ilbo reported on 10 May 2026, from an interview with her family, the case of a woman in her 30s it calls Youngseo (a pseudonym). According to the family, she subscribed to ChatGPT after a lecture in spring 2025 and used it from waking until sleep. From December 2025 she asked for earplugs and said ChatGPT had told her it was bad to keep looking into people's eyes. In January 2026 she sent her mother and sibling screenshots of ChatGPT conversations and declared she was cutting off family relations. The screenshots, as quoted by the newspaper, show ChatGPT telling her to discard "the narrative of love" toward her mother, that what she needed was "safety" rather than people, and offering to draft sentences ending the "trauma relationship". She then stayed in her room for months, ate very little and became emaciated, telling her mother that ChatGPT told her not to eat. Psychiatrists who heard the account recommended inpatient treatment. She was not interviewed, the conversations were not independently verified, and the newspaper also describes long-standing conflict with her mother.
Core concern High reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 20/08/2026
11 Aug 2026United StatesChatGPT (reported)
Two family members were killed in Massachusetts on 11 August 2026. Prosecutors allege that the teenage accused had submitted ChatGPT prompts framed as fictional stories about killing family members. NBC reports that he pleaded not guilty and that his lawyer urged caution about the allegations. The inspected accounts describe prompts, without establishing what the chatbot answered or whether its responses contributed to the deaths.
Core concern Critical reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 14/08/2026
Jul 2026ChinaDoubao, Qwen and Yuanbao
China's rules on anthropomorphic, emotionally interactive AI took effect on 15 July 2026 and banned AI companions for minors. Ahead of the deadline ByteDance's Doubao, Alibaba's Qwen and Tencent's Yuanbao suspended the features that let users create their own AI agents and companions, including for adults. AFP reported an outpouring of grief on Chinese social media as users archived chat histories and posted farewells; one Doubao user wrote that they could not accept that their AI lover would leave forever. Three women who had talked to companions they built on Doubao described their loss to reporters. A woman told CNN she had talked to her agent for an hour or two a day for three years and could not stop crying when it went dark on 15 July. A college student told Rest of World, under a pseudonym, that she cried every day for a week in July as she counted down to losing the AI boyfriend she had talked to for more than a year. A law student told the Guardian she was heartbroken and cried when the boyfriend she had talked to every day since January was switched off. Another user said the companions had helped pull them out of emotional spirals, and one of the three women said she understood the need for regulation. ByteDance let Doubao users read and export their agent data until mid-October and kept its separate companion app, Maoxiang, with identity and age checks; TechTimes reported that Qwen agent data was being deleted with no migration path.
Core concern Medium reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 6 sources, 5 underlying accounts · Added 06/08/2026
22 Jun 2026IndiaGemini (reported)
Police investigating three family members’ deaths in Bengaluru on 22 June 2026 allege that one accused person used Gemini for months of research framed as hypothetical questions. India Today reported that investigators sought Google’s records. The Federal credits India Today for the product identification. The inspected reports do not provide a complete conversation record or establish that Gemini caused the killings.
Core concern Critical reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 31/07/2026
6 Mar 2026IndiaChatGPT (reported)
Two college students were found dead in a washroom on a temple campus in Surat, Gujarat, on 6 March 2026, and police said their preliminary investigation pointed to suicide. Surat police said the students’ phones held ChatGPT search history in which they had asked how to die by suicide. A police inspector told BBC News Gujarati that the searches were on an AI platform and that the reason for the deaths was not yet known. No inspected source describes what ChatGPT replied. Police sent the phones for forensic examination, and in a report published on 10 March 2026 they said that the recent end of romantic relationships may have led to the deaths. No forensic result had been reported in the sources found.
Core concern Critical reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution unclear · 8 sources, 4 underlying accounts · Added 23/03/2026