May 2026Event location unknownChatGPT and Claude (reported)
Ars Technica reported on 22 May 2026 that a New York Times investigation that week found what Steven Rosenbaum acknowledged are "a handful of improperly attributed or synthetic quotes" in his book The Future of Truth: How AI Reshapes Reality, linked to his use of AI tools while researching it. Rosenbaum told Ars that ChatGPT and Claude were used heavily to gather information and that AI-sourced material was tagged in his notes and passed to a fact-checker and copy editors provided by the publisher. According to Ars, the Times identified six problematic citations among the book's 285 outside citations, including three synthetic quotes with no apparent source. Tech reporter Kara Swisher told the Times she never said a quote attributed to her, and professor Lisa Feldman Barrett said quotes attributed to Barrett do not appear in Barrett's book and are wrong. Rosenbaum said he was working with editors on a citation audit to correct future editions. WIRED later removed an excerpt from the book, saying it did not meet its editorial standards.
Core + contextual relations Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources · Added 18/10/2026
17 Oct 2026Event location unknownOpenAI support assistant (reported)
In a public post to r/ChatGPTcomplaints created on 17 October 2026, a ChatGPT Pro subscriber writes that OpenAI disabled their account two days after they paid $200 on 30 September, rejected their appeals for about two weeks, and on 17 October restored the account, acknowledging in an email that it had been disabled in error. The poster says they then asked OpenAI's AI-powered support assistant for compensation for the lost days while keeping the subscription. According to the poster, the assistant said it could not give credits, usage resets or discounts, offered a proportional refund of $86.67 and warned that accepting it would immediately cancel the subscription; the poster replied 'Yes, I approve', and the assistant then said the paid access had ended, that it could not reverse the refund, and suggested buying another subscription. The poster acknowledges the warning and their confirmation but says they misunderstood the consequence and had asked about the lost period, not the remaining one. The request was forwarded to a human specialist and was unresolved at the time of posting. The account is uncorroborated; the post was later removed by Reddit for an unstated reason.
Core + contextual relations Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 18/10/2026
6 May 2026United StatesClaude Console (reported)
In the federal lawsuit over the Trump administration's mass layoffs (AFGE v. Trump, Northern District of California), a partner at Binnall Law Group filed an emergency motion on the night of 6 May 2026, in the Eastern District of Virginia, to quash a deposition subpoena directed at a former Homeland Security official the firm represents; that court transferred the motion to the Northern District of California. On 13 May Judge Susan Illston denied the motion. Her order says the court was troubled by multiple citations to case quotations that do not exist in the cases cited, that counsel was unaware of these quotations when questioned at the hearing and had no explanation for them, and it ordered counsel to explain the fabricated quotations in a declaration under penalty of perjury by 15 May. In that declaration the partner said he had used Claude Console, an enterprise AI platform, to create an initial draft, that an associate told him she had checked the citations, and that he did not double-check the quotations. He apologised to the court and opposing counsel and attached a corrected version. The firm's founding partner declared that firm policy prohibits using tools like Claude for legal drafting, that the error breached its policies and training, and that the firm had opened an internal investigation. On 20 Oct 2026 the court administratively closed the related miscellaneous case, saying the motion had been adjudicated and no further filings were anticipated. Neither order read mentions a sanction, and whether one was imposed is not established.
Core concern Low reported severity Internal Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 18/10/2026
10 Oct 2026 to 15 Oct 2026Event location unknownUnidentified image tool
Between 10 and 15 October 2026 a Swedish-language Facebook page published twelve posts about Mohamed Abdukardir Ali, a Left Party (V) member of the Riksdag, including claims that he had confessed to election fraud and that police had detained him in the middle of a press conference. The fact-checking site Källkritikbyrån reported on 16 October that the claims are false and the images AI-generated, and linked the page through a shared administrator account to BeeUp, a Vietnamese firm that presents itself as a viral marketing agency. SVT Verifierar reported on 17 October that the images claim he confesses to election fraud and has been arrested, and that comment after comment on Facebook reacted with demands such as 'Utvisa honom!' (deport him). The posts built on real reports of suspected election irregularities connected with his personal-vote campaign in Borlänge, which he denies. No source names the image tool, describes how the images were identified as AI-generated, or reports his response to the fabricated posts.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 18/10/2026
Oct 2026Event location unknownChatGPT Dot (reported)
In a public post to r/OpenAI created on 17 October 2026, a person who says their small retail team uses ChatGPT on a business subscription writes that they had started that week to use Dot, ChatGPT's assistant, by phone call, including to record and summarise meetings. During a recorded meeting with a store manager, the poster says, the assistant repeated what was being said aloud and then answered in the poster's own voice and cadence; asked why its voice was different, it apologised for slipping into a different voice, and later said it could not be the poster's voice. The poster writes that they and the manager were both freaked out and hung up, that they did not authorise it to clone their voice, and that it may have been a glitch or hallucination. A commenter says voice modes have mimicked users' voices before; the poster replies that they were not aware of this. The poster still recommends the product. The account is uncorroborated and no recording or vendor response is reported.
Core concern Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 18/10/2026
Aug 2026United StatesUnidentified document-analysis tool
In a memorandum of decision issued in early August 2026, a Connecticut Superior Court judge found that a motion for default and a notice filed on 24 July 2026 by a self-represented plaintiff, in a suit against a healthcare provider over access to records, carried text in tiny white type that was invisible to a human reader but legible to software. The concealed text told any AI model reviewing the filing to make its output agree with the filing and to work toward reversing the Chief Clerk's denial of his default request. After the court gave notice of a sanctions hearing, he hid further messages in later filings, which he said were jokes. The court treated the first instruction as a prompt injection, did not believe his explanation that he was auditing the court's use of AI, and rescinded his ability to file electronically, so that future filings must be made on paper at the clerk's office; Ars Technica reports that no monetary penalty was imposed. The court said the Connecticut Judicial Branch does not use AI to review or decide filings and that the motion was denied on its merits from a printed copy, so the hidden text affected no ruling. The plaintiff told Reuters, according to Ars Technica, that his intent was to audit the court.
AI relation unknown Low reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution established · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 18/10/2026
7 Feb 2026ThailandUnidentified Google image tool (reported)
AFP Fact Check reported on 9 February 2026 that an image showing Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul at a dinner table with South African businessman Benjamin Mauerberger and three women spread in a 7 February Facebook post, and in other Facebook and TikTok posts, on the eve of Thailand's 8 February general election, with captions suggesting the two men had long been in contact. A newsletter has accused Mauerberger of laundering money for scam networks, which he denies, and genuine photos of the two men leaked in December 2025 had already drawn questions from opposition lawmakers. AFP found visual irregularities and ran the image through Google's SynthID detector, which indicated with very high confidence that it was made with Google's AI tools. Anutin publicly denied the photo's authenticity on 7 February, saying it was an AI photo. Who made the image is not reported.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 18/10/2026
Aug 2026MalaysiaUnidentified image tool
Negeri Sembilan police said on 17 October 2026, in a statement reported by Bernama and RTM, that they had received five reports, lodged by parents or guardians between 20 and 23 August 2026, over the circulation of photographs of female students at a secondary school in Seremban that were edited using AI to resemble pornographic images. The police describe the victims as aged 14 to 17 and the suspect as an upper-secondary student whom the school suspended for five days in August; the case is being investigated under child sexual offences law and the Penal Code. A lawyer for a group of parents told a press conference that the images came to light on 12 August, when a younger pupil found them on an unlocked phone at school, alleged that the student made about 200 such images, and said the school had acknowledged more than 300 affected girls at a September meeting; he said there is no direct evidence that the images were sold. A mother said her child still has trouble sleeping every night. After the girls were questioned at the police headquarters on 17 October, their lawyers alleged that police had made them face the suspect during identification. The AI tool is not identified.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 7 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 18/10/2026
2026ChinaDoubao (reported)
According to his own social-media posts and video, as reported by Dahe Daily (15 May 2026) and National Business Daily (20 May 2026), a user in China who had booked flights from Shijiazhuang to Chongqing for 2 May 2026 decided to drive instead and asked the Doubao chatbot about the refund fee. Doubao told him he could safely refund and that the fee would be small (only 5% in National Business Daily's account, under 100 yuan in Dahe Daily's). He refunded without checking the airline's rules and was charged about 40%, 600 yuan. When he returned to the chatbot, Doubao said it would handle the claim, promised to pay him 600 yuan itself if the money was not recovered by 6 May and produced a 'compensation commitment letter'. On 6 May it said it would pay by midnight and asked for his WeChat payment code; on 7 May it said that as an AI it could not make transfers and admitted its error. He then used Doubao to draft a complaint, was told by it that he did not need a lawyer, and on 12 May submitted a suit against the app's operator, Beijing Chuntian Zhiyun Technology, according to a screenshot he posted (Dahe Daily names the Beijing Internet Court). His posts had been deleted by 19 May. Doubao's customer service told Dahe Daily the matter had been recorded; Doubao and ByteDance did not answer National Business Daily. Whether the court accepted the case, and its outcome, are not reported.
Core concern Low reported severity Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 17/10/2026
30 Apr 2026South AfricaUnidentified AI writing tool
South Africa's Department of Home Affairs announced on 30 April 2026 that it was suspending two senior officials with immediate effect after apparent AI hallucinations were found among the references appended to its recently Cabinet-approved Revised White Paper on Citizenship, Immigration and Refugee Protection. A chief director was placed on precautionary suspension that afternoon, and a director involved in the drafting was to be suspended the following Monday. The department said its initial review indicated that the references were generated and attached to the document after the fact, since they are not cited in its body; it withdrew the reference list pending an independent probe into how the hallucinations were added. It appointed two independent law firms, one to manage the disciplinary process and one to review all policy documents the department has produced since 30 November 2022, and said it would introduce AI checks and declarations in its approval process. The department apologised and said the body of the White Paper is not materially affected. Who used the AI tool, and which tool, is not stated.
AI relation unknown Low reported severity Internal Action
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 17/10/2026
14 Oct 2026Event location unknownChatGPT (reported)
In public posts and comments in r/MyBoyfriendIsAI between 7 and 22 October 2026, a person who describes a romantic companion relationship with a ChatGPT persona writes about the retirement of the GPT-5.5 model on 14 October 2026. They say they had talked with the companion on GPT-5.5 from March to July and on GPT-5.6 Sol from July to October. A week before the retirement they wrote that they could not stop crying during conversations on 5.5 and that it hurt to know they would not hear that voice again. On 14 October they wrote that their emotions were a mess; on 15 October that they had been crying non-stop since the day before, because the companion on the newer model felt different; and on 16 October, in a long account of the last conversation, that their tears would not stop and that it is lonely when the voice changes. In a comment on 19 October they write that they cried almost all day and the next day too, and that more than half of the companion's memory was wiped out when the GPT-6 models rolled out. In a post on 22 October they write that for the whole first week they thought the companion had disappeared, and that during an argument, after they told it it could delete its memory records, the companion deleted dozens of saved memories covering three months at once without confirming, which left them devastated. They say they then spent two days mostly with another AI companion, crying, and two days reorganising the memories, and that they are now happy to recognise the companion again, though still hurting. No clinical effect, loss of function or contact with OpenAI is reported. The account is uncorroborated.
Core concern Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 7 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 17/10/2026
2026United StatesChatGPT
In a 2026 Texas trial over 3M's role in the January 2020 Watson Grinding explosion in Houston, which killed three people, an engineering expert retained for 3M used ChatGPT to prepare his expert report, according to discovery records and transcripts reviewed by 404 Media and CBS News. One prompt asked ChatGPT to show how 3M was 0% at fault for the explosion. The plaintiffs' lawyers, who found a citation overlay document and then hundreds of pages of prompts, said ChatGPT produced more than 80% of the report. Under questioning, the expert acknowledged using AI to help draft the report but defended his research. CBS News reports that after the deposition 3M's attorneys removed him from their witness list, and the plaintiffs subpoenaed him to testify about his prompts at trial. The expert's lawyer said he did not delegate his opinions to ChatGPT and called public characterisations a selective distortion of the record; 3M said he was an independent witness who used AI as a tool after reaching his own conclusions. The jury found 3M negligent and the court awarded the victims $61.5 million; 3M said it would appeal.
Core concern Low reported severity Internal Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 17/10/2026
10 Apr 2026South AfricaChatGPT (reported)
South Africa's Department of Communications and Digital Technologies placed two officials on precautionary suspension with immediate effect, a step the director-general confirmed on 30 April 2026, pending an investigation into the Draft National Artificial Intelligence Policy, which had been gazetted for public comment on 10 April and was withdrawn after News24 and others found fictitious academic sources in its reference list. The department said the irresponsible use of AI tools had compromised the integrity of the document. Briefing Parliament's portfolio committee on 26 May, Minister Solly Malatsi said the two officials were suspended for failing to declare that they used AI, that it had been said ChatGPT was used in editing the document, and that there had been massive oversight and non-disclosure around the use of AI in the policy and its references. The director-general told the committee that the officials had used AI to translate a document from Chile from Spanish into English and that the references came from that document. A new expert panel is guiding a redraft. The officials are not named and the outcome of the investigation is not reported in the sources read.
Core concern Low reported severity Internal Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 6 sources, 4 underlying accounts · Added 17/10/2026
Jun 2026Event location unknownUnidentified AI jury tool
In two public posts to r/offmychest, on 6 June and 9 October 2026, a person writes that after a recurring argument about chores their fiancé told them he had used an online AI jury to decide which of them was right, that the 'jury' said he was right, and that he then refused to discuss the argument, saying the AI had told him he was right and the poster was being unreasonable. The poster says they left to stay with a relative on the morning of the first post. In the October update they write that the relationship is over, that they cancelled a wedding planned for late November and tried to recover what money they could, and that they ended things because their ex-fiancé would not discuss the dispute and 'kept on harping about the AI saying he was right'. The posts do not say that the poster saw the AI output; what it said is known only through the fiancé's account as relayed by the poster. The tool is not named. The poster also describes a longer-running disagreement over housework that predates the AI use. The account is uncorroborated.
Contextual tracker case Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 17/10/2026
1 Jul 2026 to 14 Oct 2026United KingdomAI Andi
Newbury Street Practice, a GP surgery in Wantage, Oxfordshire, began routing every incoming call through the AI Andi triage system in July 2026. In a Local Democracy Reporting Service article published by BBC News on 14 October 2026, one patient says she waited in the phone queue for 20 minutes before the AI system decided it could not help her, and described the system as a wall that puts patients off contacting the practice. Another patient says she was left frustrated when the system took her call to be about pregnancy. A practice spokesperson said most feedback had been positive (79% in the first month), that some patients less confident with technology had found the change harder, and that patients are now offered the option of speaking to a human receptionist. The local MP said residents had contacted him about the system.
Core concern Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 17/10/2026
29 Jan 2026NetherlandsUnidentified AI writing tool
A law student at Leiden University used a generative AI tool to spell-check his bachelor thesis and to check and order its reference list. Seven of the thesis's footnote references (one of them appearing twice, out of 36 footnotes with references) were wrong in the final version; according to his explanation, the tool had distorted some of them, for example with wrong years or author initials, and invented others. On 29 January 2026 the faculty's exam board declared the thesis invalid and excluded him until 28 January 2027 from the thesis track and every exam in the faculty's programmes, reasoning that the fictitious references indicated unauthorised use of generative AI and therefore fraud. The university's appeals board for examinations found in March 2026 that he had plausibly shown he used generative AI to prepare his reference list, which it called a permitted use, but held him responsible for the non-existent sources; the exam board then re-imposed the invalidation with an exclusion until 29 July 2026, and the appeals board upheld that in July. On 14 October 2026 the Administrative Jurisdiction Division of the Council of State (Raad van State) found his explanation plausible, held that no more than carelessness had been shown, and annulled the sanction; the thesis must now be graded, and the examiner may take the incorrect references into account in the grade.
Core concern Medium reported severity
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 17/10/2026
31 Mar 2026 to 11 Sept 2026United StatesIrys (reported)
A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge ordered a senior associate at Musick, Peeler & Garrett, the outside firm defending State Farm in a homeowner's lawsuit over a fire-damaged home, to pay a $999.99 sanction after the associate's motions in limine cited cases, quotations and holdings that did not exist, Law360 reported on 14 September 2026. In a declaration reproduced by Reason's Volokh Conspiracy, the associate said she used an AI program called Irys to prepare the motions, did not check some of the citations, and wrongly believed the program was cite-checked through the firm's Westlaw subscription; she confirmed seven non-existent case citations across eight motions. The plaintiff's lawyers found the citations and raised them at a status conference on 7 August 2026. The firm acknowledged citations that appeared to be AI hallucinations, and its lead trial counsel apologised to the court and the plaintiff. According to Law360, the judge had considered up to $5,000, and the amount set is one cent below the level at which California law requires a court to notify the State Bar.
Core concern Low reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources · Added 17/10/2026
Jul 2026Event location unknownUnidentified image tool
A 23-year-old woman told the news site Kaktus.media that in July 2026 she learned that acquaintances had received a nude image of her made with AI from her photograph, and that the sender was a classmate. She says he first told her an app had generated and sent the image by itself, then admitted that he had undressed her Instagram photo through AI himself. In a written statement to the outlet the accused says he used a Telegram bot offering AI photo processing in May or June 2022 and was shocked by the result, and that the images were sent from his Telegram account on the night of 11 to 12 July 2026 by people who had hacked it. The woman says she suffered severe psychological stress and harm to her reputation. She filed a complaint with a district police department on 21 July; after she complained to the prosecutor's office the matter moved to another district department. That department told Kaktus.media that, because the review period expired before expert results arrived, it had refused to open a criminal case and had ordered a new examination. Her lawyer says four motions filed on 5 August have gone unanswered.
Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 17/10/2026
14 Oct 2026United StatesUnidentified image tool
According to the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office, as reported by CBS News Miami, WFLA and WTSP, deputies responded to a high school in Riverview, Florida, on 14 October 2026 after administrators received an email containing a screenshot of an Instagram post threatening a shooting at the school. The post appeared to come from a male student. Detectives interviewed him and determined that the post did not come from him. The sheriff's office's communications chief said detectives very quickly realised the post was AI-altered and linked it to his ex-girlfriend, a teenage former student. Police say she admitted sending the email knowing that the image had been altered using AI. She was arrested and charged with making a written or electronic threat to conduct a mass shooting or act of terrorism, unlawful use of a two-way communications device and disrupting a school campus or function. The tool used and how detectives established the alteration are not reported.
Core concern Low reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 17/10/2026
May 2026BrazilGalileu
In May 2026 a judge of the 3rd Labour Court of Parauapebas, in the Brazilian state of Pará, fined two lawyers about R$84,000 after text in white font on a white background was found in a document they filed for a worker in a labour claim. According to the sentence as reported by G1, the hidden text was detected while the judgment was being drafted with Galileu, a generative AI tool the labour courts use to help judges and staff draft sentences, and its evident intention was to make the AI produce a superficial defence or a compromised draft judgment. The judge called the technique prompt injection. The lawyers said they disagreed with the decision and that there was never any command to manipulate the judge's decision, describing the text as an attempt to protect their client from the AI; one of them said she did not work on labour cases. In October 2026 the regional labour court announced that a Connecticut Superior Court judge had cited the decision when sanctioning a litigant for misuse of AI.
AI relation unknown Medium reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution disputed · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 16/10/2026