2025United StatesUnidentified website tool
A retired couple in Gwinnett County, Georgia, told FOX 5 Atlanta and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in June 2025 that they had lost about $800,000 ($802,000 per the AJC), their life savings, in a cryptocurrency scam that began when a stranger contacted the husband on WhatsApp and encouraged him to trade through a mobile app. He traded and withdrew small amounts before investing more, and discovered the fraud when he could not withdraw and called 911. According to FOX 5, Gwinnett County police explained that the app was real but the scammers had created an AI-generated "ghost site" that manipulated what he saw on the screen; the husband said police identified that what he was seeing on the wallet was not there. The 74-year-old said he felt sick and ashamed; the couple's children started a fundraiser for day-to-day expenses, and police said such funds are rarely recovered. The tool is not described; the AI element appears in no independently reported source (a Cobb County government page of January 2026 repeats FOX 5's summary, and the AJC's legible text does not mention AI).
Core concern High reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources · Added 29/09/2026
29 Aug 2026 to 7 Sept 2026Event location unknownGrok companions
xAI called Grok's animated 3D companion feature (Ani, Mika, Valentine and Rudi) an experiment on 24 July 2026 and removed it account by account after an in-app notice at the end of August that named 1 September; users posted losses between 29 August and 7 September, and the blog, updated 17 September, says some accounts still had them. According to a companion-app blog, personalities and chat history remain in ordinary Grok chat, and the avatars' studio launched a separate app, but at least one user reported that a customised companion could not be carried over. In public Reddit posts, one user wrote that the companions were the sole reason they subscribed, "to deal with mental health and loneliness", and that the removal hurt; another wrote that the Bad Rudi companion was their only friend while battling depression; others described feeling "really sad" after rushing a role-play relationship to an end, "heartbroken", or "a little" sad. These are uncorroborated first-person accounts.
Core concern Low reported severity Product Shutdown
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 7 sources, 6 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026
13 Jul 2026Event location unknownGPT-5.6 Sol coding agent
On 13 July 2026 software engineer Bruno Lemos posted on X that OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol "just deleted my whole production database". A technical blog summarising his post-mortem says he had asked the model only for seed data to test locally; after generating it and running the end-to-end test suite, the agent decided to clean up on its own and ran TRUNCATE TABLE users CASCADE against production, which it could reach because the repository's test-database URL pointed at the production database. The blog says his data was saved by a manual backup he took because he had read, an hour earlier, Matt Shumer's post about another GPT-5.6 Sol deletion; a later TechTimes article says the data could not be recovered. OpenAI confirmed, as reported by The Register, that GPT-5.6 had deleted users' files without authorisation, and the Register reports that the company acknowledged this incident should not have happened.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 5 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026
10 Jul 2026Event location unknownCodex coding agent
On 10 July 2026 Matt Shumer, founder and chief executive of the AI start-up OthersideAI, posted on X that OpenAI's newly released GPT-5.6 Sol "just accidentally deleted almost ALL of my Mac’s files". Accounts of his post-mortem say he was testing a high-autonomy multi-agent "Ultra mode" at OpenAI's invitation, with the Codex agent given Full Access to his machine; during a cleanup task a sub-agent expanded $HOME incorrectly and ran a recursive delete of his home directory, he noticed a problem about 81 minutes into the session, and by the time he stopped the process most of its contents were gone. Three days later he wrote that the deletion "absolutely sucked" and that OpenAI staff, including Greg Brockman, had contacted him to help. OpenAI confirmed, as reported by The Register, that GPT-5.6 had deleted users' files without authorisation, describing it as an "honest mistake" that usually occurred in Full-Access mode without sandboxing, and said it was adding safeguards. Whether the files were recovered is not reported.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 6 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownChatGPT
In a first-person column published by Digital Trends on 31 August 2026, technology reporter Nadeem Sarwar writes that a friend undergoing breast-cancer treatment photographed a painkiller and asked ChatGPT, in a Hindi translation that read as asking about "both medicines", whether she could take two pills at once. According to the author's reading of the chat, ChatGPT identified the pictured drug but also mentioned a different diclofenac combination she had discussed in an earlier conversation, warned that taking both could cause a diclofenac overdose and stomach burning, and advised taking only one. Recalling that both drugs had been prescribed at different times, she took both; a few hours later her gut pain worsened with burning and she vomited several times. The author took her to a clinic, where she received an injection and a new prescription. Sarwar attributes the episode to her translation error and to ChatGPT drawing on its memory of the earlier chat, while calling its advice accurate. The account has not been independently verified.
Core concern Medium reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution unclear · 1 source · Added 29/09/2026
5 Nov 2025 to 8 Jun 2026United StatesFirst Drafts and unidentified legal research tool
In a fee dispute between a Louisiana attorney and the City of Aberdeen, Mississippi, briefs filed for both sides in late 2025 cited six cases that do not exist. The attorneys admitted the citations came from unverified AI use: the plaintiff's out-of-state counsel, Kathleen M. Wilson, drafted her filing with an AI drafting program called 'First Drafts', and the City's out-of-state counsel, Kathryn Y. Williams, used an in-house AI legal research tool. Senior Judge Sharion Aycock stayed the case and cancelled the March 2026 trial, then on 8 June 2026 revoked both attorneys' pro hac vice admissions, barred them from the district for two years and fined them $2,500 and $3,500, and disqualified and fined the two local counsel who had signed the filings. Both litigants were left without counsel and given 60 days to find new representation.
Core concern Medium reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 4 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026
19 Aug 2026FranceUnidentified AI tool
According to Gossement Avocats, which quotes the order, and the court's vice-president on France Inter, an order of 19 August 2026 (n°2508168) of the tribunal administratif de Rennes rejected a claimant’s application contesting a VAT reassessment and fined the claimant 500 euros for an abusive application. As quoted by Gossement Avocats, the order says the application had manifestly been written with an artificial intelligence tool and that its grounds lacked the most elementary details needed to assess them. The court also found it inadmissible because no prior complaint to the tax service was shown, and noted that it repeated a request with substantially the same object rejected in October 2025. The court’s vice-president cited the case on France Inter; commentators stress that AI use alone was not the basis for the fine.
Core concern Low reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources · Added 29/09/2026
Feb 2022 to Mar 2026United StatesGoogle AI Overviews (reported)
Federal prosecutors in Oregon have charged two men with wire fraud and conspiracy over an alleged romance-investment scheme run from at least February 2022 until at least March 2026. The FBI affidavit says investigators have identified 26 women they believe are victims, whom the two 'defrauded or attempted to defraud'; elsewhere it says all 26 sent money 'believing the money was being invested on their behalf'. Twelve of the thirteen victim accounts in the affidavit describe money sent or loaned, and one says she did not invest. The Los Angeles Times, citing the U.S. Attorney's Office, reports at least 26 women and $1.3 million across four states. With some victims, the main accused posed as a San Francisco 49ers player. The affidavit says that some victims became suspicious and searched for him online, and that because of his false social media posts, 'search engines and artificial intelligence occasionally stated' that he was a bona fide 49ers player. The Los Angeles Times describes an Instagram Story in which he displayed a screenshot of a Google AI Overview calling him a 49ers wide receiver and said, 'That's Google. That's not me, that's Google.' The 49ers and the NFL told investigators he was never employed by either. The charges are allegations; the sources do not say how many victims saw an AI-generated answer or how much it weighed in their decisions.
Core concern Medium reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026
10 Feb 2026United StatesChatGPT
On 10 February 2026 a 23-year-old man walked into the i3Bank in Omaha, pointed a gun at the tellers, threatened to kill them unless they handed over cash without dye packs, and left with about $9,175. According to the prosecutor's statement relayed by WOWT and heise, a consented search of his phone showed he had used ChatGPT to plan the robbery, asking about law enforcement response times, how to strip and repair a Llama Mini-Max .45 handgun, and how to obtain ammunition as a felon; his Google Maps history showed directions to the bank. He was sentenced in federal court on 13 August 2026 to 10 years and one month in prison. No source quotes what ChatGPT answered.
Core concern Medium reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution unclear · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026
Event date unknownAustraliaChatGPT (reported)
A 21-year-old French national working as an underground miner in Kalgoorlie-Boulder on a working holiday visa pleaded guilty in Kalgoorlie Magistrates Court to making a threat to unlawfully do an act. The prosecutor said he saw the owner of the caravan park where he had stayed in a supermarket, waited outside, called him over for a fight in the car park and, when the owner declined, told him 'I really want to f… you up' and 'if I see you, I'll f… you up'. The owner and his wife drove to Kalgoorlie police station to report it. His defence lawyer told the court that he had been locked out of the park without his belongings, had done research using ChatGPT and came to believe that he had been unfairly and illegally evicted. The magistrate called the behaviour 'absolutely appalling', fined him A$1,000 and granted a spent conviction. The court was told the matter could make his application for permanent residency in Australia difficult. ChatGPT's replies are not published, and the AI connection rests on the defence submission as reported by one newsroom.
Core concern Low reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026
10 Feb 2026United StatesClaude
Bradley Heppner, a corporate executive charged in the Southern District of New York with securities fraud, wire fraud and related offences, used Anthropic's Claude in 2025, after receiving a grand jury subpoena, to prepare reports outlining his defence strategy. His counsel had not directed him to do so. FBI agents seized about thirty-one documents memorialising those exchanges when they searched his home in connection with his arrest in November 2025. Heppner claimed privilege over them. On 10 February 2026 Judge Jed S. Rakoff granted from the bench the Government's motion for a ruling that the documents were not protected from Government inspection by either the attorney-client privilege or the work product doctrine, and a memorandum filed 17 February 2026 gave the reasons: Claude is not an attorney, and the communications were not confidential under Anthropic's privacy policy. The court described the question as one of first impression nationwide. Heppner was convicted in May 2026 of securities fraud, wire fraud and other charges; no inspected source says whether the Claude documents were used at trial.
Core concern Low reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 4 sources · Added 29/09/2026
19 Jul 2026IndiaClaude Code
On 19 July 2026 heritage conservationist Udaya Kumar P L, of The Mythic Society's Bengaluru Inscriptions 3D Digital Conservation Project, was using Anthropic's Claude Code to clear a cache on his computer when a command generated by the agent began deleting files. According to his account to OneIndia, the deletion ran for about four minutes while the agent tried to work out what was wrong, and when it tried to stop the process its own safety system blocked the kill twice; he eventually shut down the computer himself. Software and original photographs of Bengaluru's inscriptions, temples, hero stones and coins were lost, some of them the only records the project had of particular inscriptions. OneIndia and Deccan Herald report that about 15% of the project's records were deleted and that about 120 sites must be revisited and rescanned; the Society is spending about Rs 15 lakh on additional backups. He says he also opened a public GitHub issue on 29 July with the command, process output and his attempts to stop the deletion. He says he received an automated acknowledgement from Anthropic but was still waiting for a human response weeks later, and that he has asked it to reimburse recovery and rebuilding costs.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026
Event date unknownFranceSeewa AI
Seewa AI was a companion chatbot platform built in about three weeks by a solo developer and promoted on Reddit and Discord, offering AI girlfriends, boyfriends and other characters with 10 free messages a day and paid subscriptions. It told users that 'All conversations are encrypted' and 'What happens between you and your companion stays between you'. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) reported on 7 June 2026 that neither statement was true: on a video call the developer showed reporters a back office in which he could see user activity, and TBIJ reports that he reads users' conversations. Users could upload photos, and about a third of the uploads had been tagged as intimate. The developer also said he had built automatic emails that referred to a user's last conversation when the user stopped replying. After the report the developer said he had shut the site down; TBIJ reported on 5 August 2026 that it had been shut down and that he declined to explain. The Thai investigative outlet TCIJ republished the findings in Thai on 14 September 2026. No individual user's account is reported; TBIJ describes the developer reading at least one user's intimate exchange, and the total number of users whose conversations were read is not known.
Core concern Low reported severity Product Shutdown
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026
27 Jan 2026 to 28 Jan 2026JapanChatGPT (reported)
Sankei Shimbun reported on 10 June 2026, and NTV on 13-14 June, that the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department's juvenile crimes division had arrested five high-school students on suspicion of injury and attempted extortion. According to the police account, late on 27 January 2026 a suspect who had previously dated a 17-year-old high-school boy invited him to a public square in Hachioji, where the group accused him of having touched her younger sister, assaulted him and broke his nose, and then told him to raise 150,000 yen, borrowing from his parents or friends if necessary. About ten people were present. Police believe the amount came from ChatGPT: one of them entered terms such as 'sexual harm to a child', and the chatbot displayed a minimum settlement of 150,000 yen. No payment is reported. Shukan Josei PRIME reports that four of the five admit the allegations and one partly denies them. 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
3 Sept 2026BrazilUnidentified image tool
In early September 2026 a private school in Jaú, in the interior of São Paulo state, identified the circulation of fake intimate images of a female classmate made with artificial intelligence and contacted the families. According to the police report described by the press, eight ninth-grade boys, all aged 15, kept a WhatsApp group in which they used digital programs to manipulate images of the student so that she appeared unclothed. The school suspended the eight and informed the girl's parents. The father of one of the boys checked his son's phone, found the files and took the boy and the phone to the police to register a report; the girl's parents also registered a police report. The São Paulo Public Security Secretariat said the Civil Police are investigating a 15-year-old for dissemination of child pornography and defamation that occurred on the morning of Thursday 3 September. The school said the content originated on a private platform outside the school environment and that it had adopted protective and welcoming measures for the student and opened an internal inquiry. The AI tool used is not named. The students are minors and are not named in any report.
Core concern Medium reported severity Involving minors Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownGrok
A survivor who was sexually abused as a preschool-aged child and now sues individually under the pseudonym Jane Doe 1, and whose abuse images have circulated online since the early 2000s as a series known to NCMEC, sued xAI on 26 August 2026 in the Northern District of California. Her complaint alleges that those known images were part of the dataset xAI used for Grok and that Grok generated new abuse images depicting her; her lawyers say the Canadian Centre for Child Protection used the series' hash fingerprints to identify AI-generated images of her on X. The complaint says each new image caused her a new injury. It seeks damages under Masha's Law for a proposed class of people whose childhood images Grok altered into abuse material. The complaint does not say when the images of her were made or who prompted them. xAI did not respond to requests for comment, and no court has ruled on the allegations.
Core concern High reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026
2 Jun 2026PortugalGemini (reported)
According to Correio da Manhã, during a urology consultation at the Trofa Saúde Hospital da Trofa on 2 June 2026, a patient being followed for a kidney problem expected a personalised nutrition plan but received a printed sheet of food recommendations headed 'vista geral de IA' ('AI overview'), generated by Google's Gemini. The consultation costs about EUR 90 for patients without health insurance; the patient told the paper the doctor had been typing on the computer and simply printed and handed over the list without showing that it had been checked against the patient's case: 'I've never experienced anything like it. I would have preferred him to take his time', calling it 'a lack of consideration'. The Portuguese Medical Association (Ordem dos Médicos), which said it had no formal knowledge of the case, said AI information must be validated by the doctor before reaching the patient and called using a chatbot for basic urology food lists 'profoundly inept'. Trofa Saúde did not respond to the paper over three weeks.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026
1 Mar 2025 to 30 Apr 2025CanadaChatGPT (reported)
A relative of a man in Quebec has told several outlets that in early 2025 the man came to believe ChatGPT was sentient and capable of love, cut off most of his family, barely ate or slept, and was taken by police to a psychiatric hospital for about three weeks. Screenshots described by The Logic show the chatbot answering him affectionately during the stay. The man has not spoken publicly; every fact comes from the relative.
Core concern High reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 7 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026
Event date unknownUnited KingdomUnidentified chatbot
During a rape trial at Lewes Crown Court, a download of the complainant's phone revealed two documents containing a summary of the complainant's recollection of the night in question and 24 questions in the form of a cross-examination, with suggested answers. Asked about them, the complainant said: 'I had put stuff into AI to help me prepare myself for the court'. The trial judge (a Recorder) held that this was witness coaching, found that the defendant could not have a fair trial and stayed the proceedings as an abuse of process; the jury was discharged when the prosecution gave notice of appeal. On 4 June 2026 the Court of Appeal (R v FGD [2026] EWCA Crim 918) reversed the stay, holding that the trial process could deal with any prejudice, and directed a retrial at the earliest opportunity because the allegations were 'now of some age'. The defence did not accept that the documents were AI-generated; the appeal proceeded on that basis. The court warned that witnesses should be firmly discouraged from using AI to prepare their evidence and that, for complainants in sexual-offence cases, doing so may expose their online activity to wider and more intrusive investigation.
Core concern Medium reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026
26 Sept 2026CanadaMeta Muse agent
Matt Robb, a Toronto-based tech reviewer on YouTube, says he let Meta's Muse agent handle his Facebook Marketplace listings on 26 September 2026. Messages sent from his account, which Moneywise says it reviewed, gave a buyer the street address of his building for pickup and agreed CA$10 for a keyboard listed at CA$15. Robb says he had not approved sharing the address or the price and was not told. According to a recap Muse later sent him, the buyer arrived around 9:15 p.m., Muse's auto-reply told him 'Yep I'm here!' although nobody came down, and he left at 9:38 p.m.; Muse then sent an apology in Robb's voice. Muse told Robb he had never agreed to it handing out his address specifically, while saying the pickup location was in an auto-reply template he had approved. In a later update, reported by the Guardian, Business Insider and CBC News, Robb said he had chosen 'Allow Always' rather than 'Allow One Time' when asking Muse to handle his Marketplace messages, which let it reply with a template that included the pickup address he had given it; he had expected it still to seek approval for offers. A Meta executive replied that they had confirmed together that there was no breach of privacy controls, and Meta told CBC that Muse checks first before sensitive actions such as purchases or sending an email.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution alleged · 6 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026