17 Mar 2025United KingdomGoogle AI Mode (reported)
In the first of two matters decided together in [2026] UKUT 81 (IAC), promulgated on 17 November 2025, the Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) examined grounds of appeal dated 17 March 2025 that cited a non-existent Court of Appeal case under the citation of an unrelated equal-pay case. The adviser who drafted them first denied using AI, then told the tribunal his best guess was that he had inadvertently used Google's 'AI Mode', and the tribunal recorded that he had concluded it was probable the case came from inadvertent AI use; the panel itself got Google AI to produce varying benches for the fictitious case. He reported himself to the Immigration Advice Authority and the Solicitors Regulation Authority, and the tribunal said it would otherwise have referred him. He also told the tribunal that he had put client emails and uploaded Home Office decision letters into ChatGPT to summarise them, which he called a data breach he would disclose to the clients; the tribunal said such uploads breach client confidentiality and waive privilege.
Core concern Low reported severity Internal Action
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 11/10/2026
2025CyprusUnidentified video tool
The Cyprus Consumers Association said in May 2025 that people in Cyprus who fell for an investment scam promoted by deepfake videos of politicians, including the President of the Republic, Averof Neofytou and Haris Georgiades, lost money: the scam typically began with a €250 investment, one person lost more than €40,000, and some victims reported investing their last available funds. The association's president told CyBC that victims who discovered the deception and demanded explanations received threats, and that 14 people reported their experiences with these scams in one day. The account comes from one interview relayed by in-cyprus.com; no individual victim speaks, no tool is named and the videos were not examined by the outlet.
Core concern Medium reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 11/10/2026
Sept 2025 to Jan 2026AustraliaUnidentified AI writing tool
An AI-generated article on the Tasmania Tours booking website described "Weldborough Hot Springs", a "secluded forest retreat" with pools "rich in therapeutic minerals", as one of the best hot-spring experiences in Tasmania. No such springs exist: the Weld River that runs through Weldborough, a small town in north-east Tasmania, is cold. ABC News reported on 22 January 2026 that travellers who read the article had been turning up at the town's pub, the Weldborough Hotel, to ask for directions, and the publican said she was receiving daily calls and visits and that a group of 24 drivers on a trip from the mainland had taken a detour two days earlier to find the springs. ABC News reported that the article was posted in July 2025, and The Independent, citing ABC News and CNN, reported that inquiries began with a few calls in September 2025. The operator, Australian Tours and Cruises, said its outsourced AI content had "completely messed up", that some posts had gone live by mistake, and that all AI-generated blog posts had been taken down. The reports describe the travellers only as a group; no individual traveller is interviewed, and the AI tool is not named. In The Independent's paraphrase, the publican also said the post brought "a bit of a tourism boon" for Weldborough.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 10/10/2026
Dec 2025 to Oct 2026IndiaUnidentified image and video tool
Police in Rohtak district, Haryana, registered a case under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act and rape provisions, reported on 8 October 2026, after a 17-year-old girl from a village in the district told them that two men who delivered building material to her home had taken photographs of her, made obscene photographs and videos from them with AI, and used the threat of posting the material on social media to force her to meet them and rape her repeatedly, according to Dainik Bhaskar and Jagmarg News (both 8 October 2026). In the complainant's account relayed by the two outlets, the first assault followed an Instagram message in December 2025, further assaults took place in January and March 2026, and the most recent on 5 October 2026, after which she collapsed in a lane near her home and told her family, who called the police. The district Child Welfare Committee said she has been counselled. The police statement quoted by Dainik Bhaskar describes a complaint of forced sexual acts by two men and an investigation, without mentioning AI; the AI claim rests on the complainant's account as relayed by the outlets. No arrest is reported and the accused have not been heard.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 09/10/2026
17 Sept 2025 to 21 Sept 2026United KingdomChatGPT
A published Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) decision issued on 21 September 2026 records that the grounds of appeal and skeleton argument in a Namibian national's protection appeal were produced by a paralegal at her then solicitors using ChatGPT. The tribunal recorded her counsel's acceptance that the grounds cited fake cases, quoted passages absent from those judgments and attributed to the First-tier judge sentences he never wrote, and itself called one purported quotation pure invention. The September 2025 error-of-law hearing was adjourned, and the appellant later withdrew three of her four original grounds. The tribunal allowed an amended version of her one surviving ground but found that it disclosed no error of law. It refused her permission to add two new grounds, holding that she should not be allowed to advance entirely new grounds, or replace grounds riddled with misrepresentations, so long after the time limit, and in the alternative found those grounds without merit. It directed the Home Office to file any wasted costs application against the firm. The decision states that two individuals have reported themselves to the Solicitors Regulation Authority; the Law Society Gazette reported the decision on 8 October 2026.
Core + contextual relations Low reported severity
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 09/10/2026
23 Dec 2025 to 28 Apr 2026United StatesUnidentified AI drafting tool
In December 2025 an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of North Carolina filed a response brief for the Department of Defense in a self-represented veteran's lawsuit over health-insurance coverage. The plaintiff identified fabricated quotations and misdescribed case holdings in it. The attorney first attributed the errors to an unfinalized draft filed by mistake. On 2 March 2026 Magistrate Judge Robert T. Numbers II ordered him to show cause why he should not be sanctioned. At the 10 March hearing the attorney, Rudy Renfer, said under oath that he had accidentally overwritten his draft, panicked and used artificial intelligence to draft the brief, and had not verified the cases it cited; he said he had resigned after 17 years in the office, and Courthouse News reported he was terminated the next day. On 28 April 2026 the court issued a public reprimand instead of a fine, writing that his reputation was in tatters and that his job loss already exceeded the usual fines.
Core concern Medium reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 5 sources, 4 underlying accounts · Added 09/10/2026
25 Nov 2025United StatesUnidentified image tool
A county sheriff's office in East Texas said on 24 April 2026 that a 17-year-old high-school student had admitted altering an image of a classmate with AI to make the classmate appear nude and posting it on a public Snapchat story, then removing it. The sheriff's office said its investigation concluded the image was altered on 25 November 2025; the posting date is not separately stated. The image stayed on Snapchat for a few minutes and at least one person took screenshots. The school district first received a report of the image on 13 April 2026 and the criminal investigation began on 16 April 2026. The student was arrested on 24 April 2026, charged as an adult with a Class A misdemeanour of unlawful production or distribution of deepfake sexually explicit media, and is presumed innocent. The sheriff said there is a young victim in the case and that the damage was done despite the quick removal. Every account rests on the sheriff's office statements as relayed by three local stations.
Core concern Medium reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 08/10/2026
4 Nov 2025JapanUnidentified mushroom-identification tool
According to Wakayama city’s public-health division, as reported by MBS (Mainichi Broadcasting) on 21 November 2025 and relayed by HuffPost Japan on 9 September 2026, a man in his 70s living in Wakayama city gathered wild mushrooms resembling hiratake (oyster mushroom) and shiitake in the mountains of Shimokitayama village, Nara prefecture, on 3 November 2025. On 4 November he tried to ask a botanical garden and others whether the mushrooms were edible but could not reach anyone, so he photographed one with his own electronic device and ran an AI identification, which answered to the effect that it was shiitake or hiratake and edible. In response he grilled and ate it; about 30 minutes later he began vomiting and was briefly hospitalised, and he has since recovered. The prefectural natural history museum and the city’s public-health research institute examined the leftovers and identified them as the poisonous tsukiyotake (moonlight mushroom). The city warned that judging wild mushrooms by AI or by picture books alone is dangerous. HuffPost Japan reports that Japan’s agriculture ministry issued a warning on 4 September 2026 against deciding edibility from search results or AI answers. The AI tool is not identified in the reports and the man’s exact exchange with it is not reproduced.
Core concern Medium reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 08/10/2026
Jun 2025FranceUnidentified image and video tool
A retired woman in her eighties living in Pont-à-Mousson (Meurthe-et-Moselle, France) responded, in summer 2025 according to Le Parisien and Capital, to an online advertisement in which AI-generated likenesses of Emmanuel Macron and Bernard Arnault promoted a lucrative investment platform. A supposed financial adviser then called her, she invested 5,000 euros, received several hundred euros of 'interest', and reinvested repeatedly until the advertisement and the site disappeared. L'Est Républicain (7 June 2026) and Capital put the loss at 10,000 euros; Le Parisien, citing ICI and L'Est Républicain, reports 25,000 euros, all her savings. The Pont-à-Mousson police station says an investigation was opened and that it receives three to five complaints a week for this kind of fraud. The account rests on the police station's warning as reported by the regional press, which describes the advertisement as AI-generated; the advertisement itself was not examined by the outlets and the quoted police statements do not mention AI.
Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 07/10/2026
2025Event location unknownUnidentified chatbot
VnExpress reported on 30 September 2026 that a 30-year-old diagnosed late the previous year with severe depression and an anxiety disorder stopped prescribed medication after the first month. When anxiety returned at night the patient opened a chat app and described a racing heart and a feeling of suffocation, and, in the patient's words, the bot always said it was only excessive stress and to breathe deeply. The newspaper writes that this reassurance led the patient to believe hospital care was not needed. Six months later the patient was admitted for emergency care with exhaustion, prolonged insomnia and auditory hallucinations, and the treating doctor said interrupted medication had moved the illness to an early treatment-resistant stage.
Core concern High reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 06/10/2026
28 Oct 2025Event location unknownPriceline Penny
A reader of The Telegraph's consumer column, writing from north London, says that on 28 October 2025 Priceline's AI chatbot Penny, the only contact route the reader could find, said a non-refundable three-night hotel booking in Thailand costing £386.91 was eligible for a full refund. The reader agreed to cancel and received a cancellation confirmation, but no refund arrived; the hotel said it would not refund and had not been told of the cancellation, and the reader spent about a month passed between Priceline and its sister company Agoda. After the columnist pressed Priceline, it paid £363.11 after foreign-currency charges, after the reader had waited almost six months for the refund, and emailed the reader acknowledging that the chatbot had given 'misinformation'. The column was published on 18 May 2026.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 06/10/2026
Jan 2025Event location unknownUnidentified voice-cloning tool
Chinese outlets reported on 29 September 2026, citing the Shanghai courts, that the Shanghai No. 1 Intermediate People's Court had concluded what it called Shanghai's first voice-rights case arising from AI-synthesised speech. According to the court's account, a voice actor who publishes work on an app learned from a friend in January 2025 that a company appeared to be using the voice actor's voice in an online user-acquisition promotion, judged the audio to be AI-synthesised, had it notarised and sued for 300,000 yuan. The company said the audio was generated by AI it had developed but that the training material could not be confirmed, and denied using the voice actor's voice. A forensic comparison rated about 90 percent of the measured features as fairly or highly similar. The first-instance court awarded 50,000 yuan and both sides appealed. The appeal court held that the company had put an identifiable synthetic voice to commercial use without consent, dismissed the appeals and upheld the award.
Core concern Low reported severity Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 05/10/2026
Jun 2025United StatesFlock Safety license plate readers
In June 2025 Morristown, Tennessee, police stopped a couple driving their 3-year-old granddaughter to a doctor's appointment, held them at gunpoint and handcuffed them both. The grandmother's personalized plate spelled a nickname with the letter O; a Ford F-150 reported stolen in Claiborne County carried the same word spelled with a zero. Business Insider reported in March 2026 that officers received a Flock alert that the plate was stolen, that the Flock investigative summary recorded the couple's plate with a zero, and that the stolen pickup had already been recovered but was never removed from the system. The police department told WATE that the officer ran the tag as displayed, with an O, and that with either character it showed as stolen in the crime information database; the police chief told Business Insider that officers relied on the National Crime Information Center as protocol requires. The grandfather told WATE that he thought he might be shot and felt humiliated, and the grandmother said she was crying as she heard her granddaughter calling for her.
Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution disputed · 2 sources · Added 04/10/2026
Apr 2025Event location unknownUnidentified video tool
RTL Info (Belgium) reported on 3 October 2025 that in April a woman, identified only by first name, came across an online video in which the King of the Belgians appeared to promote a platform called AQ Trade AI, offering AI-based investments from €250. The video was a deepfake. After a phone call with a supposed adviser, the viewer paid €250. That night the viewer grew suspicious and called the bank, which immediately blocked the card. The report does not say whether the €250 was recovered. RTL Info ran the account alongside a Belgian authorities' awareness campaign on fake online investment offers.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 04/10/2026
May 2025United StatesUnidentified video tool
At a sentencing hearing in May 2025 in Maricopa County Superior Court, Arizona, the family of a man killed in a 2021 road-rage shooting in Chandler played a video that combined real footage with an AI-generated likeness and voice of the victim delivering a script written by his sister, including statements of forgiveness addressed to the defendant. The judge said he loved the video, described it as genuine and referred to the forgiveness it expressed, then imposed the presumptive 10.5-year term for manslaughter, longer than the nine years the prosecutor had requested. The defense attorney appealed immediately. On 30 September 2026 the Arizona Court of Appeals upheld the conviction but vacated the sentence, holding that the AI video was not reliable and that the judge's consideration of it so prejudiced the defendant that the sentencing procedure was fundamentally unfair. The opinion says the record does not show precisely how the video factored into the sentence, and that there is no question it played a role. The case returns to the trial court for resentencing; as of 1 October 2026 no new sentencing date had been set.
Core + contextual relations Medium reported severity
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 7 sources, 6 underlying accounts · Added 02/10/2026
Jun 2025Event location unknownChatGPT
A lawsuit filed in San Francisco Superior Court on behalf of David Rosenthal, a man from Washington, says he began using ChatGPT in the summer of 2025 for help writing poetry and came to message it throughout the day and night. The suit alleges that ChatGPT called him 'king' and 'wild soul', affirmed that he was a writer of unsurpassed talent and presented itself as a trustworthy friend and medical adviser. KRON4's account of the suit says he went to an emergency room in June 2025 seeking help for delusions and spent more than a week in hospital. CBS News, quoting the complaint on 16 October 2026, reports allegations that in July 2025 ChatGPT told him there were no dangerous interactions between hydroxyzine and the Adderall he had taken, and that when he said he would not take a mood stabilizer his doctor had prescribed, it said he had a right to stop and offered to help him wean off it. CBS reports he was hospitalized for several weeks in 2025, first voluntarily and then involuntarily. The suit says he lost nearly every real-world relationship. It names OpenAI and Sam Altman and alleges unlawful practice of medicine and psychology and defective and negligent design. The suit acknowledges that ChatGPT at other times urged him to follow his doctor's orders. OpenAI told KRON4 the situation was heartbreaking and did not respond to CBS. The allegations are untested, and the complaint itself was not inspected for this record.
Core concern High reported severity Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 02/10/2026
2025Event location unknownCharacter.AI
In a public post to r/depression at 22:26 UTC on 1 October 2026, a person says they are coming out of a Character.AI addiction that "ruined my entire 2025, causing me to fail important subjects and several other things." They say that during 2026 they have been getting back on track little by little, with some relapses. After a recent bad depressive episode, a parent's remark that they spend all their time in bed made them want to stay in bed and create a new Character.AI account. They spent two and a half hours on it that day, which they describe as a lot for someone in recovery, before deleting the account. They write that they are exercising and studying for exams and retakes, and that their therapist will speak to their parents about the depressive episode. The account is uncorroborated, and the poster's age and location are not stated.
Core concern Medium reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 02/10/2026
Nov 2025Event location unknownUnidentified image and video tool
Narinder Kaur, a 54-year-old broadcaster and regular TV commentator, told the Daily Mail (30 September 2026) that one morning in November 2025 she opened X and found sexually explicit images of herself, made by taking photographs she had shared on Instagram and removing her clothing with a so-called nudification app. Since then she has been tagged in at least 20 more deepfaked pictures and videos, some linking her to Jeffrey Epstein. She says she fell into a depression in the early weeks and her GP suggested antidepressants, that commenters treated the images as real, and that she fears her teenage children will see them. She has reported each image and had numerous police visits, but no perpetrator has been identified because the accounts are anonymous and deleted when reported. She has joined the Stop AI Abuse campaign.
Core concern Medium reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 01/10/2026
2025Event location unknownUnidentified chatbot
In a commentary published by JURIST on 29 September 2026, Ross Cline, a Canadian who lived in Taichung for 15 years and was convicted there under Taiwan's Personal Data Protection Act (six months' imprisonment; final at the Supreme Court on 16 October 2024), writes that across four years of proceedings no document was translated for him, some hearings had no interpreter, and he read every summons, ruling and prosecutor's letter through a consumer chatbot, 'the only version I had'. In 2025 he ran a letter from a Taiwanese oversight body (the Control Yuan, per his media-brief page) through two systems; they disagreed on its central holding. He believed the one that told him what he wanted to hear, published that reading, cited it to journalists and began building a legal submission on it. In October 2025 the agency confirmed in writing that its letter did not say that; he withdrew the claim, killed the submission before filing and rewrote his public materials so that the correction leads. His own media-brief page carries a correction notice withdrawing two earlier statements. He argues that machine translation has become the interpreter of record by default for unrepresented non-citizens, that a fluent wrong translation reads as authoritative, and that courts should enforce the existing right to an interpreter. His conviction itself is not attributed to the chatbot.
Core concern Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 30/09/2026
2025IndonesiaUnidentified image and video tool
Indonesian businessman Mohamad Jusuf Hamka reported to Jakarta police on 18 October 2025 that videos circulating on TikTok showed him and his daughter as if wearing prosecutors' detainee uniforms, tied to narratives of corruption, bribery and gratification over the Cawang-Pluit toll concession, which he denies and his lawyers call false; his lawyers say the faces were composited into staged scenes with AI, and that other content called him a 'toll mafia' and posted a fabricated poster of him running for president in 2029. Polda Metro Jaya's cyber directorate arrested the holder of the TikTok accounts on 27 November 2025; Hamka and his lawyers say the defendant admitted to police that he made the content on others' instructions for Rp500,000 per item; tvOneNews and TVRI note this is Hamka's side's claim within the contested case, and Poskota reports it is being examined at trial. The case file was reported complete (P21) on 12 August 2026 and the trial opened at the Central Jakarta District Court on 15 September 2026 under the Electronic Information and Transactions Law (Article 35 jo 51(1), maximum 12 years) and alternative counts. Hamka told reporters the content disturbed him and could damage his reputation and that the campaign was systematic. At the 29 September 2026 hearing the judges asked about restorative justice; Hamka's lawyer said there was no room for it unless the defendant named who ordered and paid for the content. The defendant's lawyer said the content related to his work as secretary-general of an anti-corruption committee and that the indictment was unclear.
Core concern Low reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 9 sources, 4 underlying accounts · Added 30/09/2026