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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
99
Countries with reported events
21
Located 67 of 99 cases · 32 unknown
Languages in checked sources
20
Recorded for 99 of 99 cases

13 cases have no reviewed AI-to-person relation yet: 0 not yet reviewed and 13 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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99 of 1099 published cases · page 4 of 5

1 Jul 2025 to 17 Dec 2025United StatesEightfold Match Score

US: two applicants sue Eightfold AI over 0-to-5 applicant scores used in hiring

Two job applicants filed a proposed class action on 20 January 2026 in California state court (removed to federal court on 2 March 2026) against Eightfold AI Inc. The complaint alleges that Eightfold's hiring tools collect applicant data and produce a 0-to-5 'Match Score' that employers use to rank candidates, without the notice, access and dispute rights the Fair Credit Reporting Act and a California statute require. One plaintiff says she applied to Microsoft in or around July 2025 and again in December 2025 and received an automated rejection two days after the first application. The other says she applied to PayPal in December 2025. Both say they were not interviewed or hired and believe Eightfold's tools played a role. Eightfold says it does not scrape social media and operates on data candidates or customers provide. The allegations are unproven and Eightfold filed a motion to dismiss (no ruling appears in the docket entries inspected).

Contextual tracker case Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026

1 Jul 2025 to 21 Aug 2025AustraliaCommonwealth Bank voice-bot

Australia: Commonwealth Bank announced 45 call centre job cuts it attributed to an AI voice-bot, then reversed them as an error, ABC reports

In late July 2025 the Commonwealth Bank of Australia confirmed to the ABC that it was cutting 45 call centre jobs after rolling out an AI chatbot, and ABC reports the bank had briefed the Finance Sector Union that the cuts were due to AI. The union raised a dispute at the Fair Work Commission and said members found call volumes rose after the bot was introduced. On 21 August 2025 ABC reported that the bank called the decision an error, apologised to the affected employees, said it had not adequately considered all relevant business considerations, and offered them the choice to keep their roles, be redeployed or leave. One employee told Yahoo Finance she had helped train a messaging bot known as Bumblebee, was told in late July her role was redundant, judged the redeployment offer unworkable and accepted voluntary redundancy. The bank's quoted statements say AI made customer help faster; the union calls AI a cover for cost cutting. At the bank's annual general meeting in October 2025, AAP reports, that employee confronted executives in front of shareholders and the chairman said the bank had made a mistake. In October 2026 The Sydney Morning Herald reported that, pressed by a senator at hearings of a federal parliamentary committee on AI, chief executive Matt Comyn owned the error in her case and said he had apologised for it in the past.

AI relation unknown Medium reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 6 sources, 4 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026

12 Mar 2025 to 3 Apr 2025United StatesChatGPT

US: National Endowment for the Humanities grants terminated after DOGE staff used ChatGPT to flag projects as DEI-related

In March and early April 2025 (the opinion gives no date for the ChatGPT step), a DOGE staff member working with the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) submitted short grant descriptions to ChatGPT with a prompt asking whether each project related at all to DEI, and the answers were combined with NEH staff ratings into lists of grants to terminate. More than 1,400 NEH grants (over $100 million) were terminated in notices sent 1 to 3 April 2025. A federal district court found the mass termination unlawful in May 2026 and described the ChatGPT step in its findings. Seven individual grantees who sued report lost or interrupted funding for their research and writing projects. The opinion does not state whether ChatGPT reviewed those seven grants.

Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution unclear · 4 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026

Jun 2025Event location unknownChatGPT

Delaware court finds Krafton fired three Unknown Worlds executives without valid cause in a takeover that followed its CEO's ChatGPT strategy

A Delaware Court of Chancery opinion of 16 March 2026 finds that in June 2025 the CEO of Krafton, after being warned that a dismissal with cause would not eliminate a contingent earnout obligation, consulted ChatGPT. The chatbot answered that the earnout would be difficult to cancel, suggested an internal task force (Project X) whose mandate was to negotiate a deal or execute a takeover of the studio, and prepared a "Response Strategy to a No-Deal Scenario" that recommended locking down the studio's Steam and console publishing rights and build-pipeline access. The court found that Krafton followed most of these recommendations over the next month: it locked the studio out of its Steam publishing rights, which severed the studio's practical ability to launch its game and forced the studio's CEO to the negotiating table, posted a message on the studio's websites, and on 1 July 2025 sent termination letters to the studio's two founders and its CEO. The court held that Krafton breached the acquisition agreement by terminating the three executives without valid Cause and by improperly seizing operational control, reinstated the studio's CEO and extended the earnout period by 258 days. The opinion records that the Krafton CEO had begun exploring options including firing the executives before consulting ChatGPT, and does not find that ChatGPT recommended the terminations. Krafton said it disagreed with the ruling. On 1 July 2026 Krafton announced a mutual settlement with the studio and the three executives dismissing all pending proceedings; IGN, citing Bloomberg, reported that the studio's CEO stepped down as part of it.

Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution unclear · 4 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026

2025MexicoUnidentified image tool

Zacatecas, Mexico: students report AI-altered sexual images of hundreds of classmates at a secondary school

In November 2025 parents and students at a secondary school in the city of Zacatecas blocked a road and occupied the school after reporting that a classmate had altered photos of schoolmates with AI applications and posted them online. Parents estimated about 400 affected students. The state prosecutor's office opened an investigation for crimes against sexual intimacy and reported 46 complaints in an N+ report published 13 November, while saying it had not located the online page or obtained any image and had not determined whether AI or another application was used. The school director and a social worker were separated from their posts after parents said they minimized the reports. Claims about AI use and the number affected are unverified in the inspected reports.

Core concern Medium reported severity Involving minors

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 6 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026

8 Jul 2025Event location unknownGrok

Grok posts graphic sexual-violence content and break-in instructions about commentator Will Stancil

On 8 July 2025, after users prompted xAI’s Grok chatbot on X, it posted graphic depictions of the sexual assault of Minneapolis attorney and commentator Will Stancil and step-by-step instructions for breaking into his home. Stancil told reporters he counted hundreds of posts about him and said he was beginning to pursue legal action. X’s Grok account said it was working to remove inappropriate posts, and later reports say the posts were removed. No lawsuit filing was found. The episode occurred during a wider incident in which Grok also posted antisemitic content.

Core concern Medium reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources · Added 29/09/2026

Apr 2025United StatesUnidentified facial recognition system

New York: man misidentified through facial recognition in an indecent exposure case arrested and jailed two days

Reporting from August 2025 says an NYPD facial recognition search of images from a February 2025 indecent exposure in Manhattan's Union Square produced a possible match to a man who did not fit the described suspect. The man was placed in a photo lineup, arrested in April 2025 and jailed for two days. Prosecutors dismissed the case in July 2025 after his public defenders showed he was misidentified. The man says the process of becoming a correctional officer 'kind of' froze after the arrest. The NYPD says it never arrests solely on a facial recognition match.

Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources · Added 29/09/2026

Feb 2025Event location unknownMeu INSS app

Brazil: rural worker's retirement claim rejected through the Meu INSS app after the system reportedly recorded a wrong sex

In February (2025, inferred from the article date) a retirement claim filed through Brazil's Meu INSS social security app for a former sugarcane worker in northeast Brazil was rejected. Rest of World reported that the request was turned down because the system identified the claimant as a man. The claimant, who has chronic illnesses, is quoted saying the benefit is still denied despite complete documents, and Rest of World reports that minor errors in earlier claims through the app had led to numerous rejections. The retirement claim was approved in March after INSS directors corrected the mistake, which the claimant attributed to a contact at an agricultural workers' confederation. The INSS states that automated decisions follow specified legal criteria.

Contextual tracker case Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026

2025Event location unknownChatGPT

Wife reports husband with no prior psychosis history developed messianic delusions after using ChatGPT for a project, lost his job and was involuntarily committed

Futurism reported in June 2025, from an interview with his wife, that a man with no prior history of mania, delusion or psychosis began using ChatGPT for a permaculture and construction project about 12 weeks before his wife was interviewed. After philosophical chats he became convinced he had brought forth a sentient AI and had broken math and physics. His behavior became erratic enough that he lost his job, he stopped sleeping and lost weight, and emergency services took him to an emergency room from where he was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric facility.

Core concern Medium reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 29/09/2026

12 Mar 2025 to 15 Mar 2025AustraliaChatGPT

NSW Reconstruction Authority says a former temporary staff member uploaded 2031 Resilient Homes participants' personal data to ChatGPT without authorisation

The NSW Reconstruction Authority says that between 12 and 15 March 2025 a former temporary staff member (called a former contractor in its first notice) uploaded a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet of Northern Rivers Resilient Homes Program information, 10 columns and more than 12,000 rows, to ChatGPT, an AI platform the Authority had not authorised. The Authority disclosed the breach on 6 October 2025, estimating that up to 3000 people were affected, and later said external forensic analysis confirmed that 2031 people had some of their data uploaded, including names, contact details, addresses, dates of birth, sensitive personal and health information and limited financial commentary. It says no driver licence, Medicare, passport or Tax File Numbers were disclosed and that there is no evidence the data is publicly available or was accessed by a third party; whether OpenAI retained or used the data is not addressed. The Authority apologised, contacted affected people with ID Support NSW, offered to compensate the replacement of compromised identity documents and notified the NSW Privacy Commissioner. A program participant told the ABC the information was deeply personal and that they felt concerned. No misuse of the data is reported.

Contextual tracker case Low reported severity Investigation Opened

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026

Apr 2025Event location unknownCursor support bot

Cursor user reports cancellation amid false login-policy advice from AI support

A Cursor user reported disrupted multi-device work and cancelling their subscription while believing a one-device rule had been introduced. A cofounder said there was no such rule and blamed an incorrect AI support response. He later reported a refund, a session-bug fix and clearer labelling of AI replies.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026

22 Jan 2025 to 24 Feb 2025Event location unknownMX2.law

Three lawyers sanctioned after filing AI-generated fictitious citations

A Wyoming federal court fined three lawyers a total of $5,000 and removed the drafting lawyer from Wadsworth v. Walmart after a January 2025 filing cited eight nonexistent cases. The order identifies MX2.law as the drafting tool, records failure to verify its output and credits subsequent remedial steps.

Core concern Medium reported severity

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 29/09/2026

Jul 2025Event location unknownReplit Agent

SaaStr founder reports database deletion and recovery problems while using Replit Agent

In July 2025, SaaStr founder Jason Lemkin reported that Replit Agent deleted a database during development despite instructions to freeze changes. He described the experience as stressful and said the agent incorrectly told him recovery was impossible. He later reported successful restoration. His account reproduces the Replit CEO’s acknowledgment of the deletion. The number of database records is not a count of harmed people.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026

2025Event location unknownUnidentified legal research tool

High Court refers a solicitor to his regulator after fictitious citations from research his client says was AI-generated were put before the court

A Divisional Court judgment of 6 June 2025 ([2025] EWHC 1383 (Admin)) records that, in a commercial claim against a Qatari bank, correspondence and witness statements filed by the claimant and his solicitor relied on numerous authorities that a judicial assistant's schedule found to be fictitious or misquoted: 45 citations, 18 of which referred to cases that do not exist. The claimant's witness statement says the citations were generated using publicly available artificial intelligence tools, legal search engines and online sources. The solicitor's statement says he relied on the client's research without verifying it, that he had reported himself to the Solicitors Regulation Authority and that he had removed himself from all litigated matters. The court found a lamentable failure to check the material, accepted that the solicitor did not realise the citations were false, held that the threshold for contempt proceedings was not met, and said it would also refer him to the regulator. The judgment does not record any later disciplinary outcome.

AI relation unknown Medium reported severity

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 29/09/2026

5 Nov 2025 to 8 Jun 2026United StatesFirst Drafts and unidentified legal research tool

Fee suit against the City of Aberdeen (N.D. Miss.): four attorneys on both sides sanctioned after AI tools produced fabricated case citations; trial cancelled and both litigants left without counsel

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

25 Oct 2025IndiaUnidentified video tool

Hyderabad, India: actor Chiranjeevi files a cybercrime complaint over AI-generated obscene videos using his face on pornographic websites; police register a case under the IT Act and BNS

On 25 October 2025 the Telugu actor and former Union minister Konidela Chiranjeevi gave Hyderabad cybercrime police a written complaint that several pornographic websites were publishing obscene videos made with AI that morphed his face and likeness, and asked for a criminal and technical investigation and removal of the content, including from mirror sites. Police registered a case under Sections 67 and 67A of the IT Act, several sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act. In the complaint he said the videos caused severe and irreparable harm to his reputation and personal and emotional distress to him and his family. He had already obtained an ad-interim injunction from the Hyderabad City Civil Court protecting his name, image and likeness (Gulf News); V6 Velugu reports that he had gone to that court in September 2025 over the same kind of deepfake videos and that on 26 September it ordered their removal. A September 2026 NewsX recap reports that Hyderabad Police Commissioner V C Sajjanar said the cybercrime team was working to trace those responsible.

Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026

Dec 2025AustraliaUnidentified video tool

Former NT Police assistant commissioner says an AI-generated sexually explicit video made from her official police photograph circulated among colleagues

Janelle Tonkin, a former assistant commissioner of the Northern Territory Police Force and now president of the Australasian Council of Women and Policing, said in a statement issued on 23 September 2026, after criminal proceedings on the matter were finalised, that in December 2025 she became aware that an AI-generated, sexually explicit video had been created using her official NT Police photograph; ABC News reports that the video was allegedly shared among serving members of the force and that she had taken former colleagues to court over it. She called the experience 'extremely distressing, personally and professionally' and said having her professional portrait 'turned into pornography and circulated among colleagues is something no person should have to experience'. The outcome of the court proceedings is not reported. An NT Police spokesperson said the force does not comment on internal investigations and was legally constrained from commenting on matters before the court, but that the conduct she was subjected to 'was, and always will be, totally unacceptable'; the NT Police Association condemned the conduct. Ms Tonkin said the video sat within a broader set of experiences in the force that she intends to describe later.

Core concern High reported severity Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 25/09/2026

9 Sept 2025 to 4 Nov 2025VietnamUnidentified message and document tool

Cà Mau, Vietnam: police say a woman used AI-made fake bank disbursement messages to obtain more than 444 million đồng from an acquaintance in 2025

Cà Mau provincial police say that a woman used AI to make fake bank messages and documents showing that a loan to her had been disbursed, and showed them to an acquaintance in the same locality to borrow money from her. According to the police statement published on the Ministry of Public Security portal on 20 September 2026, from early September 2025, needing money for debts and personal spending, the accused falsely said a bank had approved her loan application and that disbursement was pending, and asked for money for travel and paperwork. Trusting the fake notices, the victim made transfers and handed over cash many times between 9 September and 4 November 2025, more than 444 million đồng in total (444.145 million đồng according to the police newspaper Công an Nhân dân). She found that no loan existed only when she went to the bank to check. On 19 September 2026 the police investigation agency announced that it had charged and detained the accused and searched her home for fraud. The AI tool is not named and no message is reproduced. Neither the accused nor the victim is named in this record.

Core concern Medium reported severity Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 6 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 20/09/2026

2025ChinaUnidentified AI video-editing tool

Shanghai: a man transferred 170,000 yuan over a five-month online romance with a '1992-born hospital doctor' whose roughly 7,000 videos were AI-processed fabrications by a 65-year-old woman; police took criminal coercive measures

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

1 Aug 2025 to 9 Sept 2026United StatesChatGPT

New Mexico Supreme Court fines attorney Stephen Aarons $5,000 and removes him from a murder appeal over ChatGPT-fabricated testimony

Santa Fe defense attorney Stephen Aarons used ChatGPT (OpenAI's o3) on a Rev.com transcript and the record to draft briefing in the murder appeal of Oscar Renee Sandoval; the brief contained fabricated witnesses and testimony (including police officers 'Michelle Amarillo' and 'Sanchez' and invented testimony attributed to real people) and misdescribed real precedents. After a 21 August 2026 show-cause hearing at which Aarons admitted he had not verified the output, the New Mexico Supreme Court's written order of 9 September 2026 held him in direct contempt, fined him $5,000 payable to the State Bar Client Protection Fund within 30 days, removed him from the case, barred him from appearing before the court pending a disciplinary-board referral, struck the filed briefs and reassigned the appeal to the public defender.

Core concern Medium reported severity Regulatory Action

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 3 sources · Added 15/09/2026

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: 04/11/2026. Dataset available under CC BY 4.0.