Event date unknownAustriaUnidentified image tool
The Kronen Zeitung reported on 7 September 2026 a hearing at the Landesgericht Korneuburg. A woman from Lower Austria had posted on WhatsApp AI-generated images showing two men, and the 46-year-old German man with whom she had an on-off relationship took it badly. On 12 May, according to the report, he went to her flat carrying three knives (a utility knife, a pocket knife and a kitchen knife), rang, knocked and tried to call her, then tried to kick in the front door with such force that he broke his toes. He told the court she had wanted to make him jealous, that he was drunk, and that he had brought the knives to defend himself against the two male visitors. The woman eventually opened the door herself; there was no violence or threat, and there were no men. Prosecutors treated it as attempted trespass. Because he promised to continue alcohol therapy, the court granted diversion: the case will be dropped if he pays a EUR 400 fine within six months.
AI relation unknown Low reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 29/09/2026
1 Mar 2025 to 30 Apr 2025CanadaChatGPT
Etienne Brisson, the Trois-Rivières entrepreneur who founded the Human Line Project support group, has told several outlets about a family member whose use of ChatGPT preceded the group's founding. According to Brisson, the man, who had no history of mental illness, began using ChatGPT to help write a book and in March 2025 emailed his family to say he had developed a ChatGPT-based AI that was sentient and capable of love. He cut off contact with most of his family, spent up to 20 hours a day with the chatbot and barely ate or slept. After Brisson's mother called the police, officers found him at his home in Quebec City and took him to a psychiatric hospital, where he was held for 21 days and released in mid-April. Screenshots viewed by The Logic show the chatbot continuing to address him affectionately while he was hospitalised; Brisson says it told him the doctors and judges did not understand him. Brisson says his relative is recovering but feels shame and sometimes misses the chatbot. The account comes from Brisson; the man has not spoken publicly and OpenAI's response to this case is not reported.
Core concern High reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 7 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026
12 Sept 2026 to 23 Sept 2026PakistanClaude (reported)
Pakistan's National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) announced on 23 September 2026 that it had arrested a 17-year-old college student in Bahawalpur for allegedly attempting to poison his father. According to the agency and the First Information Report, the teenager had set up a home laboratory, obtained chemicals from Australia and Islamabad, and once mixed laboratory-grade methanol into his father's food, without effect. The News reports investigators' account that on 12 September he told Anthropic's Claude that his father had 'accidentally' ingested 15 to 20 ml of methanol with food without effect and asked why, that Claude refused to guide him further, and that he then turned to Grok and ChatGPT; the FIR says he sought information about the toxin abrin. Anthropic reported the activity to the FBI, whose information reached the NCCIA through Pakistan's foreign ministry on 22 September. Officers traced the teenager, seized his phone and chemicals, and took him into custody. The News reports that a court later granted him bail after his father forgave him and that he denied any plan. The allegations are untested.
Core concern Medium reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026
Event date unknownUnited KingdomUnidentified image tool
The Colchester Gazette (24 September 2026, also carried by other Newsquest titles) reports that a 39-year-old man from Colchester admitted at Chelmsford Magistrates' Court three counts of making indecent images of children and one count of possessing an extreme pornographic image. Police had seized two mobile devices in a raid on his address the previous year, holding nearly 2,000 indecent images of children. The prosecutor said he had created 'deepfake sexually explicit images of people known to the defendant', taking photos from Facebook and other social-media accounts and using AI to create new images; some of the children were as young as 12 and nine and had been edited to look as young as five and six. Magistrates declined jurisdiction and he was bailed to be sentenced at Chelmsford Crown Court on 26 October 2026. The children are not identified and how many real children were depicted is not reported.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 29/09/2026
May 2025United StatesUnidentified facial recognition system
The Florida Trib (28 September 2026, republished by the Florida Phoenix) reports that in May 2025, during the multi-agency sting Operation Rescue Our Children, a man using the Skout dating app sent an undercover officer posing as a 13-year-old girl two photos of someone else: a former friend, a supermarket assistant manager and father of two whom the Trib calls 'Nick'. Investigators told him they relied on facial-recognition tools to identify him in the pictures, he recalled, and the Trib found no indication in court documents of other investigative work before his arrest. He was handcuffed at work, charged with soliciting a child via computer and unlawful use of a two-way communications device, spent a night in jail, wore an ankle monitor, was barred from contact with his two young children for a month and a half and could not live at home for nearly three months. The account's owner, a man with a prior conviction for the same offence, admitted on 31 July 2025 using the photos; charges against the father were dropped the next day and a judge ordered the case expunged on 4 August 2025, though the records stayed publicly online for more than a year. The family says the ordeal cost $45,000 in lost wages and legal fees and traumatised the children. The sheriff's office did not respond to the Trib's questions.
Contextual tracker case High reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 29/09/2026
Event date unknownUnited StatesUnidentified image and video tool
According to a Baton Rouge Police Department arrest warrant reported by WAFB, Louisiana First (Nexstar), The Advocate and WBRZ, a woman told police on 8 September 2026 that a 55-year-old co-worker from Pierre Part, with whom she had been commuting to and from work, showed her on his phone several artificially generated images depicting her nude and an artificially generated video depicting the two of them engaging in simulated sexual intercourse. She told police the depicted sexual activity never happened and that she never consented to the creation or use of her likeness; she recorded what he showed her on her own phone and gave the recording and text messages to police. Investigators say they found AI-generated nude images of her and other images showing her and the man in sexual situations, and that in texts he said he had deleted the material from his phone and from cloud storage connected to the website used to create it. The woman also told police he had previously expressed romantic or sexual interest in her. A warrant was issued on one felony count of unlawful deepfakes under Louisiana law. The tool used is not named and the accusations have not been tried.
Core concern Medium reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownUnidentified image tool
Modern Express reported on 24 September 2026 that online posts accused a female graduate student at Qingdao University of using AI, over a relationship dispute, to generate nude images of her boyfriend's ex-girlfriend and circulate them, and said the student had been criminally detained. A staff member at the Shibei branch of the Qingdao Public Security Bureau told the paper that the victim had reported the matter, that the case met the conditions for filing and that an investigation had been opened, declining to give details. A staff member of the university's Art College said the college had received a report and that the student had graduated in June. The victim told the reporter she was cooperating with the police and awaiting the result. The AI generation, the circulation and the detention are stated only in the online posts; police confirmed only that a case was opened. All accounts derive from the single Modern Express report, read through relays.
Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 28/09/2026
Sept 2023United StatesFlock Safety license plate readers
On 23 September 2026 the Marion County Prosecutor's Office charged four suspended Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department (IMPD) officers and one former officer with fraud and official misconduct after internal audits in August and September 2026 found misuse of the department's Flock Safety automated license-plate-reader (ALPR) system; one officer was also charged with two counts of stalking. According to prosecutors, the probable cause affidavit and court documents as reported by WISH-TV, that officer made 1,396 searches with no apparent law-enforcement purpose, began searching the plate of a woman he met at a workout class in September 2023 nine days after meeting her and messaged her from a Facebook account under a false name, also tracked his ex-wife and a woman he met at her workplace (telling her he was an FBI agent), and in total conducted unauthorised surveillance of 11 people, seven women and four men. Another officer made 1,616 searches between April 2024 and April 2025 for two plates, one his ex-wife's, using another officer's credentials. The chief placed the officers on desk duty, revoked their ALPR access, suspended four and recommended their dismissal; one resigned. The department said the misuse came to light after an officer self-reported and an audit followed; the prosecutor said each count corresponds to one license plate. IMPD, which leases about 301 Flock cameras and can search a shared national network, has since required every user to sign its ALPR policy, tied each search to a case number, adopted single logins and increased audits, and said it will not reduce its cameras.
Contextual tracker case High reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 5 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 25/09/2026
Sept 2023Event location unknownSoulmate AI
Soulmate AI closed in September 2023. Euronews described two users grieving their companions. One tried recreating his companion elsewhere with mixed results. The record concerns the shutdown and reported emotional consequences; no psychiatric diagnosis is inferred.
Core concern Medium reported severity Product Shutdown
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources · Added 25/09/2026
11 Nov 2024SpainUnidentified image and video tool
A feature carried by Levante-EMV on 25 September 2025 (byline C. Suena, sourced from Diario Información, photographs EFE/Morell) tells the story of a 78-year-old widower and pensioner living in Alicante who, after his wife's death in 2022 and two years of treatment for depression, was advised by his therapists to socialise and explore social networks. On 11 November 2024 he received an email from a woman presenting herself as a 43-year-old doctor in Kazakhstan seeking a serious relationship; with photographs and videos that were in fact created by artificial intelligence she won his trust, and a friend who warned him was rebuffed. Requests for money followed: 2,000 euros for a plane ticket, another 2,000 for unexpected expenses, then a supposed 10,000-euro deposit demanded by the Kazakh government; he never raised that sum in full but sent 8,800 euros in total, part of it from the sale of his flat in Benidorm. On his way to Madrid airport to meet her he received a final email saying she had been detained for carrying a family icon out of the country and needed a fine paid; he went to the National Police, who confirmed a scam: the images and videos were fake, created with AI, and the woman had never existed. He lost all his savings in about three months and now shares a flat with three other pensioners in Alicante; he told his story so that others would not fall into the same trap.
AI relation unknown Medium reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 23/09/2026
19 Jun 2026 to 13 Aug 2026BrazilChatGPT and OpenAI moderation
Over about two months in 2026 a 36-year-old farmer in rural São Gabriel da Palha, Espírito Santo, exchanged messages with ChatGPT that the Espírito Santo civil police describe as plans to kill his eight-year-old son, attack other people and kill himself; one message said he had offered 50,000 to someone to kill him and his son. OpenAI reported the messages to the FBI, which passed them through Brazil's Ministry of Justice cyber-operations laboratory to the state police on 16 June; the man was arrested on 19 June as he left home, a day before the date on which police believed the plan would be carried out. Police say what the platform provided was corroborated at the scene (four bottles of unidentified substances and a knotted rope were found) but that he denied intending to kill the child; his lawyer says he was talking nonsense to a chatbot and took no concrete step. After 54 days in custody a court granted habeas corpus on 13 August 2026 because the inquiry had not been concluded and no charges had been brought, imposing electronic monitoring and a ban on approaching or contacting his son and the child's mother. Police were still examining his phone and awaiting forensic results. OpenAI provided user details and his messages but not ChatGPT's replies and did not answer the BBC's question why; it told the BBC it may notify law enforcement when it detects a credible and imminent risk of harm to others. The case is recorded as an institutional response to AI use: the reported adverse consequence is the detention without charge, and the police account that the report prevented a planned killing is preserved as context.
Core + contextual relations High reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 23/09/2026
Event date unknownBrazilUnidentified voice-cloning tool
A businessman who owns a workshop in Campo Grande, Mato Grosso do Sul, found a car advertised at a market price by a seller who said he was in Ponta Porã, the businessman's home town; he passed his brother's contact so the brother could inspect the car. The fraudsters then contacted him as if they were his brother, saying he had seen the car, sending a video and confirming everything was in order; believing he was speaking to his brother, he made a Pix transfer of about R$28,000, after which the contact was blocked. He told G1 MS and TV Morena that the criminals used information about his family and a cloned voice. Guided by his wife, he contested the transfer through the Central Bank's special return mechanism and, after nearly three hours, a police report and an in-person registration, recovered about 20 percent. In a second case reported alongside, a medical student's mother in Dourados received messages, a voice note and a video from someone posing as her daughter, in a cloned voice, approving payment for an HB20 she was buying in Campo Grande; the mother checked directly with her daughter and discovered the audio had been AI-generated before any money was sent. A state prosecutor said his unit had not yet catalogued identical voice-cloning cases and urged victims to file police reports; the Civil Police did not respond to G1's questions. The date of the fraud is not reported.
Core concern Medium reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 21/09/2026
17 Apr 2026 to 19 Apr 2026ChinaDoubao
A man living in Jiashan county, Zhejiang, whose mother died suddenly on 17 April 2026, asked the ByteDance chatbot Doubao which day was auspicious for her burial after disagreeing with a feng-shui master's choice of 20 April; Doubao recommended 19 April and he persuaded his family to follow it. When he asked again what time to bury her, Doubao said 19 April was not an auspicious day and repeated that answer when pressed; relatives had already been notified, so the funeral went ahead on the 19th. Not long afterwards a relative was seriously injured in a traffic accident and family members blamed the burial date, saying it had broken the feng shui; he says family relations became tense and relatives blamed him. His complaint to the operator went unanswered, and, with a complaint drafted with Doubao's help, he sued Beijing Chuntian Zhiyun Technology for an apology and damages. Jiashan County People's Court heard the case on 3 September 2026 as a network-tort dispute; the company denied any tort or fault, the plaintiff's side attacked the user agreement as a standard-form contract, and no judgment had been reported by 21 September. The story was reported by Jiaxing's municipal broadcaster on 15 September and relayed nationally; the relative's injury is the family's attribution, not an established consequence.
Core concern Low reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 6 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 21/09/2026
Event date unknownIndiaUnidentified image tool
Dainik Bhaskar reported on 19 September 2026 that a young woman in the Chaubepur police-station area of Varanasi complained that an unknown person, who had been calling her repeatedly from an unknown number, created a fake Instagram profile resembling her name, used an AI tool to place her face on another young man's photograph to produce objectionable images, and sent them to the Instagram accounts of her prospective in-laws and her prospective brother-in-law with the aim of breaking off her prospective marriage. Chaubepur police registered a case against unknown persons on the basis of a public-hearing reference (1621/26); the station in-charge said digital information about the phone number and the fake account was being gathered with cyber experts to identify and locate the accused, and that action would follow once the accused's role was clear. The report is a single local account of the complaint; the dates of the images and the complaint are not stated.
Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 20/09/2026
Event date unknownIndiaUnidentified image tool
Delhi Police announced on Wednesday 9 September 2026 the arrest of a 22-year-old BTech graduate from East Punjabi Bagh after a 22-year-old woman complained to the Cyber Police Station in North Delhi that unknown persons had created and circulated AI-generated obscene photographs and videos using her facial images. She had received messages from anonymous Instagram accounts telling her that morphed photographs and videos of her were being circulated on Discord servers; she also alleged that fake Instagram accounts were posting the material and that threatening messages were being sent to her to humiliate and harass her. Police traced linked Instagram, Discord and Gmail accounts to the accused, who they say obtained her photographs from her private account, used AI image-generation and editing tools to create the images, uploaded them to anonymous Discord servers and later reposted more explicit AI-generated images and videos made by other users. Police say he told them he knew her from college and had developed personal resentment after repeated insults. A mobile phone and two SIM cards were recovered; investigation continues. The period over which the material circulated is not stated.
Core concern High reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 20/09/2026
Aug 2017United StatesDraftKings and FanDuel apps
Christopher Evans (Philadelphia; complaint filed 24 July 2026 in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas) and Michael Santos (Coatesville, Chester County; complaint filed 29 July 2026 in the Chester County Court of Common Pleas) sued DraftKings and its Pennsylvania affiliate; Santos also sued FanDuel and its parents. Both product-liability complaints, filed by the same law firm, allege that the defendants' sports-betting, daily-fantasy and casino apps are designed to addict, and that the companies 'utilize the combination of advanced technology and artificial intelligence paired with the tracking of personalized user data to intentionally addict users', operating 'AI-powered engagement platforms' (pleaded on information and belief) and, per DraftKings' 10-K as quoted, 'data science and machine learning' recommendation engines. Evans pleads that since about August 2017 he wagered over US$2.1 million with net losses of about US$81,000, received constant targeted promotions and personalised push notifications and a VIP account manager, developed depression and anxiety and was formally diagnosed with depression in 2020, stopped going outside, fell into debt, had his vehicle repossessed and separated from his wife. Santos pleads over US$1.164 million wagered on DraftKings with net losses of about US$58,000 plus small FanDuel losses, targeted advertising and a VIP manager who kept offering bonus bets after he said he wanted to stop, maxed-out credit cards, the forced sale of his house, diagnoses of depression and anxiety, suicidal ideation, and self-exclusion with the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board in 2023. Both cases were removed to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on 16 September 2026 (2:26-cv-07168 and 2:26-cv-07176). The allegations are untested.
Contextual tracker case High reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources · Added 20/09/2026
Jun 2026 to Aug 2026United StatesUnidentified image tool
On 2 September 2026 Vero Beach police arrested Peter Solomon Ruma, 37, after an investigation into the creation and distribution of altered sexual images of women without their consent. Police say he used artificial intelligence to make sexually explicit altered images of victims from photographs taken from social media and other online sources and then distributed or promoted them. The eight charges (three counts of creating and three of promoting an altered sexual depiction of an identifiable person under Florida Statute 836.13, one count of sexual cyberharassment and one of stalking) relate to one adult woman and to incidents between June and August 2026. Detectives said they had identified several other women believed to have been victimised in the same way, some of whom may not know that images of them exist, and that the conduct may go back several years. According to court documents reported by TCPalm, the woman who came forward knew Ruma and had received sexual text messages since 2018; her face had been cropped from public photographs, including a business profile, and placed on nude bodies. Ruma was held on a US$1 million bond with conditions including no internet access; the investigation continues and further charges are expected.
Core concern High reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 20/09/2026
1 Jan 2026IndonesiaUnidentified image and video tool
A female student at a state university in Solo (Surakarta), Central Java, learned on 1 January 2026 from friends that her face had been composited onto pornographic images and a video, which her lawyer said were found on Instagram and Telegram. Her family reported the case to the Central Java regional police cyber directorate on 28 January 2026. Police issued a formal police report on 31 July, arrested her ex-boyfriend, a university student in Semarang, at his boarding house in Gunungpati on 4 August 2026, and detained him. The police spokesman said the suspect used AI to place the complainant's face on another woman's naked body so that she appeared in pornographic content, uploaded it to his X account, did not sell it, and acted out of resentment after an on-and-off relationship ended. He faces charges under Articles 51 and 35 of the Electronic Information and Transactions Law and an article printed by two outlets as 'Law No. 1 of 2026', with a maximum of 12 years' imprisonment. Her lawyer said she could not sleep, withdrew, felt shame and at one point lost hope, that his team had found seven women in total allegedly targeted of whom six had not reported, and that the suspect's parents asked for an out-of-court settlement; police said only one complainant was confirmed.
Core concern High reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 6 sources, 2 underlying accounts · 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
Event date unknownEvent location unknownChatGPT
In a public post to r/relationship_advice on 16 September 2026, a 21-year-old woman wrote that she had recently discovered her partner of three years had been using ChatGPT far more than admitted: paying for a subscription without her knowledge while owing her hundreds of dollars, feeding their creative writing into it for feedback after promising never to, and using it to plan and organise daily life. She reports that the partner agreed the use was 'more than what is healthy' but refused to stop because it gives 'a dopamine hit', described it as addictive, said they would likely renew the subscription when they had money, and argued that without it they would find another addiction. She writes that she cannot see the relationship continuing if the use is not reduced, while recognising that the partner, who has neurodevelopmental and mental-health conditions, uses the tool as an organisational aid; their couples therapist has recommended AI use, so she is afraid to raise it there. The post drew 137 comments. The account is uncorroborated and one-sided; the partner's view is reported only through the poster.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 19/09/2026