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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
331
Countries with reported events
44
Located 203 of 331 cases · 128 unknown
Languages in checked sources
37
Recorded for 331 of 331 cases

14 cases have no reviewed AI-to-person relation yet: 0 not yet reviewed and 14 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.

No known event years in this selection.

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331 of 1101 published cases · page 4 of 17

Event date unknownEvent location unknownUnidentified AI tool

New hire says employer let them go in their first week for using its own internal AI tool on a compliance training, after telling the manager (first-person)

In a public post to r/jobs created on 24 October 2026, a software engineer with about three years of experience writes that, after three and a half months of assessments and eight interviews, they joined a well-known multinational company that they do not name. In the first week they were given a compliance training whose questions they found ambiguous, and they used the company's own internal AI tool to help, telling their manager, who they say was fine with it. The following Monday, the poster writes, HR joined their one-to-one meeting and told them they were being let go for using AI on the training; the call lasted a couple of minutes and they lost access shortly afterwards. The poster says that a month later about 400 applications and more than 150 cold emails had brought almost nothing back and that they are stressed. The employer, its location and the date of the dismissal are not stated. The account is the poster's alone and uncorroborated; no employer statement was retrieved.

Core concern Medium reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 25/10/2026

Event date unknownEvent location unknownChatGPT (reported)

First-person posts: adult says they cannot stop turning to ChatGPT for reassurance and that AI research loops take hours of their day

In a post to r/OCD on 22 July 2025, a poster who says they are not diagnosed writes that for the past year distressing random thoughts have led them into a cycle of turning to ChatGPT or Reddit to check that they are not normal, and that they 'physically cannot stop' turning to ChatGPT for reassurance; they feel relaxed when they stop, but the cycle continues. Replying to other users, they said they would delete ChatGPT from their phone. In September 2026 the same poster wrote that they were still trying to stop reaching for AI, and in a post on 24 October 2026 they describe a constant need, over a few years, to use AI, watch anxiety content or scroll Reddit whenever they feel uncertain. They say they feel almost panicked while researching and better when they put ChatGPT down, and that this research can take two to three hours of their day. The account is the poster's own; no chats are shown and no clinical assessment is reported.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 25/10/2026

Event date unknownHondurasChatGPT (reported)

San Pedro Sula, Honduras: police say a woman used AI and ChatGPT to fake bank-transfer receipts to deceive sellers of high-end phones

Honduras's National Police said on 24 October 2026 that they had arrested a 25-year-old woman in San Pedro Sula who, they say, found people selling high-end mobile phones on Facebook Marketplace and sent them fake bank-transfer receipts made with AI tools, including ChatGPT, so that they would believe she had paid. According to the police report as relayed by La Prensa, El Heraldo and TuNota, the deposits were not credited to the sellers' accounts. A seller alerted a motorcycle police unit while the attempt was under way, and she was arrested in the act on suspicion of attempted fraud. The outlets relay the preliminary findings in conditional wording; the police do not say how they established the AI use, and no seller's loss is quantified.

Core concern Low reported severity Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 25/10/2026

Event date unknownEvent location unknownClaude (reported)

Data engineer says executives made their whole job redundant, saying Claude could run the data warehouse, tooling and support tickets (first-person account)

In a public post to r/layoffs titled 'Laid off by claude', created on 21 October 2026, a person who describes themselves in a reply as a data engineer who also did reporting, AI and frontend work writes that executives are of the opinion that Claude can manage a data warehouse, custom tooling, support tickets, servers and new product features, and that they have said the poster's whole job is redundant because AI can do it all. The poster writes that they did not have the mental capacity to argue and accepted what they call 'the MSA', and that they feel numb and are unsure whether they want to stay in the tech industry. The employer, its location and the date of the layoff are not stated. The account is the poster's alone and uncorroborated; no employer statement was retrieved, and no source describes Claude actually taking over the work.

AI relation unknown Medium reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 25/10/2026

Event date unknownEvent location unknownUnidentified voice-cloning and deepfake tool

Nigeria: police say a suspect arrested in Lagos used AI voice cloning and deepfake technology to impersonate Elon Musk to victims of an investment scheme

The Nigeria Police Force National Cybercrime Centre (NPF-NCCC) said at a press briefing in Abuja on Friday 23 October 2026 that its operatives arrested three suspects in Lekki, Lagos State, on 14 October over alleged identity theft, investment fraud and money laundering. According to the centre's director, the suspects allegedly operated fake social media accounts impersonating prominent personalities to trick victims into transferring money, and were linked to a cryptocurrency investment scheme promoted through a website called Bitcoin Trading Hub. Investigators said one of the suspects used artificial intelligence voice cloning and deepfake technology to impersonate Tesla chief executive Elon Musk and communicate with victims, particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom. The police did not say how they established the AI use or which tools were involved, how many people were deceived or how much they lost. Seized devices were undergoing forensic examination to identify victims and trace the proceeds, and the three suspects remained in custody.

Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 25/10/2026

Event date unknownGreeceChatGPT (reported)

Greek husband says his wife filed for divorce after ChatGPT, asked to read their coffee cups, claimed he was having an affair

A Greek husband said on the morning show To Proino in April 2025 that his wife of 12 years filed for divorce after she photographed their Greek coffee cups and asked ChatGPT to 'read' them, in the manner of traditional coffee-ground fortune-telling. According to his account, relayed by Greek City Times and international outlets, the chatbot said he was fantasising about a woman whose name began with E and that he was already cheating, and that the other woman wanted to destroy their home. He said he laughed it off, but his wife asked him to leave, told their two children they were divorcing, and had him served with divorce papers three days later when he refused a mutual separation. He said she had earlier spent a year persuaded by an astrologer; his lawyer said a chatbot's reading has no legal standing. The account is the husband's; the wife's account, the chatbot's actual replies and the outcome of the proceedings are not reported.

Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 24/10/2026

Event date unknownEvent location unknownChatGPT (reported)

Spanish singer Luis Cepeda says a download page ChatGPT recommended carried malware that stole his Gmail account and his YouTube channel

In an open letter on his social media, reported by Marca on 21 October 2026 and by Que.es on 22 October, the Spanish singer Luis Cepeda said that while he was looking for a DLSS5 download, ChatGPT recommended a page that contained malware. He said that running the program it recommended led to the theft of his main Gmail account, whose birth date, parental controls and recovery options were changed, and that the account was also the email for his YouTube channel, Stripe and Coinbase. He said he had lost access to his official YouTube channel, which Que.es reports now appears under another name, and criticised YouTube and Google for offering no human contact for account recovery. He said he normally analyses what he runs but trusted a page ChatGPT had recommended. The account is his own; OpenAI has not commented in the sources read.

Core concern Medium reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 24/10/2026

Event date unknownEvent location unknownUnidentified image tool

Lipetsk region court gives man suspended sentence for AI-made pornographic collages of nine women taken from open accounts, court press service says

According to the court press services of the Bryansk and Lipetsk regions, as relayed by 7info (4 June 2026) and CNews (5 June 2026), the Zadonsk district court in the Lipetsk region convicted a local man of illegally making and distributing pornographic material. He had created a social-media group with erotic content and, to fill it, downloaded photographs of nine women from open accounts and used neural networks to turn them into pornographic photo-collages with naked bodies, which were published openly without the knowledge or consent of the women depicted. He admitted guilt and fully compensated all the victims for moral harm. The court sentenced him in June 2026 to three years' imprisonment, suspended, with five years' probation and a ban on administering internet sites, pages and other resources for the same period. When the images were made and how long the group was online are not stated.

Core concern Medium reported severity Criminal Charges

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 24/10/2026

Event date unknownTürkiyeUnidentified AI research tool

Ankara lawyer faces prosecutor and bar investigations after an AI tool added Court of Cassation decisions with wrong numbers to a petition, Kısa Dalga reports

Kısa Dalga reported on 17 June 2026 that a lawyer in Ankara faced investigations by the prosecutor's office and the Ankara Bar after a petition the lawyer signed in a civil case at a court in the Kızılcahamam district cited Court of Cassation (Yargıtay) decisions with wrong case and decision numbers. According to the lawyer, three lawyers prepared the petition and used AI only to support it with case law; the AI tool inserted existing Court of Cassation decisions but wrote their reference numbers wrongly. Opposing counsel raised the citations at the hearing, and the same day the court wrote to the bar and the prosecutor; the lawyer says the court stated the decisions could not be found as cited in the national judicial system (UYAP) and that the numbers gave the impression of having been written at random. The lawyer says the prosecutor did not specify the alleged offence, that the error was unintentional, and that the lawyer became a joke among colleagues. A lawyers' rights group called the investigations pressure on the defence. The AI tool is not named, the hearing date is not given and no outcome of either investigation has been reported.

Core concern Low reported severity Investigation Opened

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 24/10/2026

Event date unknownEvent location unknownRevoicer text-to-speech (reported)

Irish voiceover artist says an AI text-to-speech voice made from her recordings was resold online and used in ads and products she never booked

Remie Michelle Clarke, a voiceover artist in Dublin, told Bloomberg Law in April 2023 and Marketplace in June 2023 that a synthetic voice built from recordings she had made for Microsoft's text-to-speech software was being sold by a third-party AI voice company, Revoicer, as a voice called Olivia that customers could make say anything. She said she learned of it when a fellow actor asked whether another voice job had paid her well, that she had since found a number of adverts and a couple of tech products using her voice, and that buyers choosing the AI voice was affecting her smaller jobs. She said she was completely shocked. Microsoft told Marketplace that it informs voice talent and obtains their legal consent to create synthetic voices; it did not address the resale. No response from Revoicer and no legal action are reported in the inspected sources.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 24/10/2026

Event date unknownEvent location unknownRevoicer text-to-speech (reported)

British voice actor says an AI clone of his voice, built from an old IBM recording and sold to websites, has cost him jobs

Greg Marston, a British voice actor, said in accounts published in 2023 that an AI-generated clone of his voice, built from a recording he had made for IBM years earlier, was being sold to websites that were using it to build a synthetic voice that could say anything. Julia Angwin's New York Times column (republished by the Oman Observer on 25 September 2023) says he found the clone, called Connor, online and heard his voice on the Wimbledon website during the tennis tournament; Cryptopolitan (1 July 2023) says he found it on Revoicer, an AI text-to-speech site. He had signed a release allowing the recording to be used in many ways, but said he never agreed to having his voice cloned to compete against him. He estimated that the clone had already lost him jobs and was working with a lawyer to seek compensation. IBM said it was aware of his concern and was discussing it with him. The outcome is not reported in the inspected sources.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 24/10/2026

Event date unknownUnited StatesUnidentified image tool

Florida sheriff says a prison inmate used AI on a contraband phone to make thousands of sexual images of the child victim of his original case

The Martin County Sheriff's Office in Florida said on 22 October 2026 that a man serving a 25-year sentence for child sexual abuse offences used a contraband phone in his cell at Martin Correctional Institution to communicate with a child through social media and to create, with artificial intelligence, thousands of sexually explicit images depicting the victim of his original case. Detectives had received an Internet Crimes Against Children tip the previous month about a phone downloading large amounts of child sexual abuse material; prison staff recovered the phone. Sheriff John Budensiek said the man was 'continuing, essentially, to revictimize our victim' from prison, that the victim had been notified, and that investigators do not believe the AI images of the original victim were among the images he traded with others. The sheriff also said he sent an AI-generated nude image of a man to young girls on Snapchat, none of whom appeared to engage. He is expected to face additional charges (CBS12). The allegations are unproven.

Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 24/10/2026

Event date unknownUnited StatesUnidentified image tool

New Jersey prosecutor says man posted AI-generated deepfake nude images of two adults with their real names and photos; charged

The Bergen County Prosecutor's Office in New Jersey announced on 22 October 2026 the arrest of a man on charges of creating and distributing deceptive visual media, invasion of privacy, cyber-harassment and harassment. According to authorities, as reported by NJ.com, social-media posts showed two adult victims' real names and photographs alongside AI-generated deepfake nude images, and investigators identified him as the person behind the accounts. The investigation began in May 2026. The charges are unproven.

Core concern Medium reported severity Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 24/10/2026

Event date unknownEvent location unknownCharacter.AI (reported)

First-person post: young man says almost two years of Character.AI chats are crowding out walks and games and leave him feeling trapped

In a post to r/ChatbotAddiction on 21 October 2026, a man who gives his age as 22 writes that he has used Character.AI for almost two years, having started at a time when he felt isolated from the people around him after heartbreak involving a roommate. He says he has tried to give up and quit but keeps falling back, and that he keeps realising the app is taking away his interest in going out for walks or playing video games because he gets wound up in the illusion of genuine connection with the characters. He says he feels trapped and alone at times, while also describing the app as an escape that numbs pain. The account is the poster's own and uncorroborated.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 24/10/2026

Event date unknownEvent location unknownUnidentified image tool

Chinese court orders clothing shop to pay treble damages after its AI-generated product photos, claimed as real, misled an online buyer

In a consumer-protection typical case released on 12 March 2026, the Guangzhou Intermediate People's Court described a buyer who paid 411 yuan on a shopping platform for two women's tops after asking whether the model photos were real and being told that all the shop's pictures were real photographs. The garments that arrived differed markedly from the pictures in pattern, cut and style, and on review the pictures were all AI-generated, with no real photographs and no AI label on the product pages. The buyer sued for a refund and treble damages. The court held that businesses must review content they generate with AI, that undisclosed AI images differing significantly from the goods which lead a consumer to buy amount to consumer fraud, and that the clothing company must pay treble compensation. The release as relayed does not give the dates, the court of first instance or the amount.

Core concern Low reported severity Lawsuit Filed

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 24/10/2026

Event date unknownNorwayUnidentified AI writing tool

Bergen-area car dealer refused to consider buyer's complaint about faulty new car because it was AI-written, Motor reports

A car buyer living outside Bergen, Norway, who bought a new Jeep Avenger in January 2025, complained to the dealership after repeated warning messages about the brakes, ABS and stability control and more than 40 days at workshops, and asked to cancel the purchase. According to the Norwegian motoring magazine Motor, the dealer rejected the complaint, and one of the reasons it gave was that the complaint was written with AI: the manager wrote in an email that the dealer does not take AI-generated complaints into account because they only reflect the information put in. The buyer, who comes from Ukraine, says he used AI as an aid to understand nuances and phrase himself correctly because his Norwegian is limited, and calls it unfair to reject a factual complaint because of the tool he used. He has taken the case to the Norwegian Consumer Authority (Forbrukertilsynet). The dealer told Motor it had answered the customer and does not comment on ongoing customer cases. The date of the email is not given.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 24/10/2026

Event date unknownUnited StatesUnidentified image and video tool

Texas: affidavit says a state police sergeant's hard drive held AI-modified sexual images of female colleagues and deepfake nude images of girls

The Monitor (MyRGV) reports, citing a probable cause affidavit, that a Texas Department of Public Safety staff sergeant was arrested on 3 March 2025 on a charge of possession or promotion of child pornography after his wife handed investigators a hard drive she had found. According to the affidavit, the drive held images of girls under 18 with their genitals exposed that "had been deepfake", and a Texas Rangers investigator said it also held sexually explicit videos and pictures of current female DPS employees' faces modified using an artificial intelligence application. DPS suspended him with pay and opened an administrative investigation; he was released on a $300,000 bond. He is presumed innocent, and no later outcome was found.

Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources · Added 24/10/2026

Event date unknownAustraliaUnidentified AI checkout camera monitoring system

Australian supermarket cashier got final written warning after AI checkout camera system flagged scanning errors, union submission says

The Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees' Association (SDA), an Australian union representing retail, warehouse and fast-food workers, told the federal parliament's Joint Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence in its written submission that a supermarket employee with more than 30 years' service had recently received a final written warning for scanning inaccuracy generated by an AI checkout monitoring system. According to the union, the system uses overhead cameras to compare items moved through the checkout with items scanned and automatically flags possible mismatches, which set off escalation to head office and pressure on store managers to act. The SDA says her error rate was about 0.18 per cent, roughly one error in 533 items scanned, and that she was never told what standard the system applied. The Sydney Morning Herald (10 October 2026) and Guardian Australia (20 October 2026) reported the case; the Herald says the union has challenged the warning. The account is the union's; the supermarket is not named, and its response and the result of the challenge are not reported.

Contextual tracker case Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 24/10/2026

Event date unknownEvent location unknownUnidentified chatbot

Panasonic group company says a project member uploaded HR data on about 334,000 employees, former staff and relatives to a banned generative AI service

Panasonic Operational Excellence, a Panasonic Holdings subsidiary, announced on 23 October 2026 that a member of an in-house project introducing a personnel information system had uploaded part of that system's data, as registered in April 2026, to an external generative AI service whose use the company prohibits. According to the announcement as reported by ITmedia and CNET Japan, the data covered about 75,000 current and about 178,000 former employees of Panasonic group companies in Japan (employee numbers, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses, without names) and about 81,000 family members registered as emergency contacts (names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses), about 334,000 people in all. The company says the upload broke internal rules and was not an outside attack, that the employee deleted the chat history and the local data immediately after the problem came to light, and that it reported the matter to Japan's Personal Information Protection Commission on 29 September. The provider told the company that training on the data was switched off at upload but that deleted data is kept for 30 days, until 25 October. No public exposure or misuse had been confirmed. The company has not named the AI service.

Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 24/10/2026

Event date unknownEvent location unknownUnidentified AI tool

Belgian Pensions Ombudsman says an AI tool told a new retiree his missed first pension month could be paid retroactively, an answer based on Dutch rules

The Belgian Pensions Ombudsman (Ombudsdienst Pensioenen) published an anonymised example from its casework. According to the Ombudsman, a future retiree with limited digital skills wanted to apply online for an early retirement pension but did not press the send button, so no application was filed and his pension was not paid in his first month of retirement. The Federal Pension Service told him that an early pension can start at the earliest in the month after the application, so that month could not be paid. He checked this using AI and received the answer that a pension can be paid retroactively for up to one year. He complained to the Federal Pension Service and then to the Ombudsman. The Ombudsman confirmed that the service's answer was correct, told him that the information he had found concerned Dutch legislation, referred him to the pension services' websites and says it tried in this way to restore his trust in the pension service. It could not recover the missed month because Belgian pension law has no right to correct good-faith errors. The lost month resulted from the unsubmitted application; the AI answer misinformed him about whether it could be recovered. The tool is not named and the dates of the exchange and complaint are not stated; European Pensions reported the case on 9 July 2026.

Core concern Low reported severity Regulatory Action

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 24/10/2026

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