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NOPE · AI and people

AI incidents

Reports of AI-related harm and adverse experiences affecting people’s safety, wellbeing, rights and livelihoods. Explore what happened and the evidence available.

NOPE’s core concern is when AI communicates with a person, acts on their behalf, or depicts or impersonates them. The tracker also records consequential decisions, claims and privacy harms involving AI. Each case needs a described connection between AI use and the harm, including private information recorded into or disclosed to an AI service. Each account is reviewed for publication; claims may remain uncorroborated or disputed. How we review and count cases

In this selection

Published cases
66
Countries with reported events
16
Located 43 of 66 cases · 23 unknown
Languages in checked sources
20
Recorded for 66 of 66 cases

2 cases have no reviewed AI-to-person relation yet: 0 not yet reviewed and 2 reviewed as unknown. Show these cases

These figures describe the cases collected by NOPE. Coverage varies with discovery, reporting and available evidence. They do not estimate how often AI-related harm occurs.

Response counts currently use each case’s principal recorded outcome. Further proceedings may be described in its account.

Cases in this selection, counted once in their first known event year. A series may continue beyond that year. Reporting and collection dates are excluded. NOPE has searched recent events more thoroughly than earlier years, so bar heights also reflect collection effort.

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66 of 833 published cases · page 4 of 4

1 May 2026 to 15 Sept 2026IndonesiaUnidentified image tool

Indonesian university reverses suspensions of students affected by alleged AI-image abuse

Indonesian reporting describes allegations that a student made sexual images of other students with AI. A university initially suspended six affected students, then revoked the sanctions after protests. The image-abuse allegations remain attributed.

Core concern High reported severity Internal Action

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 15/09/2026

2 Jun 2026 to 4 Jun 2026United KingdomGrok

Grok falsely named former officer Christi Hill as an arresting officer in the Henry Nowak case; she is in hiding after threats

In early June 2026, social media posts and the AI chatbot Grok falsely identified former Hampshire police constable Christi Hill as one of the 'primary officers shown' in bodycam footage of the December 2025 arrest of Henry Nowak, who died after being stabbed. Hill had left the force in April 2024 — more than a year before the murder — and says the misidentification stems from a national police bravery award photo being misattributed. After 'endless threats' and 'threats of violence' she is hiding in a safe house. BBC Verify separately obtained evidence that serving officer Tristan Parsons, also wrongly accused online, was not in the country at the time; the Home Secretary said a misidentified male officer had to move out of his home. Hampshire Constabulary confirmed an unrelated officer was misidentified and received death threats.

Contextual tracker case High reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources · Added 15/09/2026

26 Aug 2026 to 28 Aug 2026SpainUnidentified Google AI tool (reported)

Argentine activist reports threats after an alleged Google AI misidentification

On 26 August 2026, WhatsApp groups in Ceuta circulated videos and images claiming that Argentine political scientist and activist Flavia Broffoni — who was in Patagonia and had not been to Spain since 2014 — was a woman filmed in Ceuta allegedly giving pepper spray to Moroccan migrants. A screenshot from one group shows that a user cropped the woman's face from the video and asked a Google AI tool who she was, with the word 'activista' as context; the answer identified her as Flavia Broffoni with details of her public profile. Broffoni received death and rape threats. La Nación's own test with the same video produced a different false identification — a student from Quilmes, with her personal data. Google Argentina said it could not confirm the screenshot came from its systems without the original link and had received no formal report. Broffoni is weighing legal action with her lawyer.

Contextual tracker case High reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 15/09/2026

1 Mar 2026 to 8 Jul 2026NetherlandsGrok

Den Bosch: 13-year-old made racist Grok videos of his teacher; the school expelled him and a court ordered his readmission

In March 2026 a 13-year-old pupil at a Den Bosch gymnasium used xAI's Grok to generate videos depicting a teacher of his in racist ways — picking cotton under a whip-holding slave driver with the text 'Hoooo.. ik werkte niet snel genoeg' and hashtags '#minderwaardig #zwart' plus her surname, and with a gorilla head — and shared them on TikTok. The school suspended and then expelled him. On 8 July 2026 the preliminary-relief judge of the Oost-Brabant district court ordered his immediate readmission because the expulsion was insufficiently substantiated, while telling the boy his acts were 'totally unacceptable and even criminal' and that he had damaged and really hurt his teacher. School leadership reported that teaching staff felt unsafe and experienced much unrest after the videos were discovered.

Core concern Medium reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources · Added 15/09/2026

4 Jan 2026IndiaUnidentified image tool

Chennai: a former employee downloaded a senior woman colleague's photographs from their company's website, morphed them into obscene images with AI applications and circulated them to the company's staff through fake Instagram accounts from 4 January 2026; Tamil Nadu's cyber-crime wing traced and arrested her (reported 4 February 2026) and she was remanded in judicial custody

From 4 January 2026 several employees of a Chennai company received follow requests from unknown Instagram accounts that then circulated defamatory content, including obscene AI-morphed images of a senior woman employee. On her complaint the State Cyber Crime Investigation Centre of the Tamil Nadu police traced the digital footprints, social-media activity and IP logs to a former employee of the same company who had resigned in October 2025 and, according to police, acted out of resentment and previous enmity to threaten, harass and publicly humiliate the victim; she had taken the photographs from the company's official website and morphed them using various artificial-intelligence applications. She was arrested, produced before a magistrate and remanded in judicial custody; the police press release was reported on 4 and 5 February 2026 and the cyber-crime DGP issued a public warning about social-media misuse. The victim alleged the images were circulated to damage her reputation and cause mental distress.

Core concern High reported severity Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 15/06/2026

4 Jan 2026United StatesGrok

St. Clair v. xAI: a writer says Grok made and published sexualized images of her on X, including from a photo of her at 14, after it told her it would not; xAI sued her in Texas and her New York case was ordered transferred there, an order the Second Circuit has stayed pending her mandamus petition

Ashley St. Clair, a writer and political commentator with about 1 million followers on X, sued xAI in New York on 15 January 2026. She alleges that from on or about 4 January 2026 Grok, prompted by other X users, altered photos of her into sexualized images and published them on X, including one made from a photo of her at 14. She says @Grok told her that her images would not be used or altered without explicit consent, but many more images followed. She also says X's reporting channel found no violation and that X removed her Premium subscription, verification checkmark and monetization. She says she has suffered serious pain, mental distress and humiliation. The same day, xAI sued her in federal court in Texas, arguing that its terms of service required her to sue there. On 23 June 2026 the New York federal court ordered her case transferred to Texas. On 8 July the Second Circuit stayed that order administratively while it considers her mandamus petition, which was still pending on 24 August. The Texas case is set for trial on 1 March 2027.

Core concern High reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 12 sources, 4 underlying accounts · Added 29/01/2026

Cases may have several effects and sources. Mixed accounts qualify when they include a reported harm or adverse experience. People are counted within individual cases where sources support a number; we do not publish a collection-wide total of distinct people.

A source’s existence, the experience it reports and AI’s causal role are separate questions. A lawsuit records allegations unless a subsequent finding establishes them.

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Last dataset update: 22/10/2026. Dataset available under CC BY 4.0.