Skip to main content

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
211
Countries with reported events
37
Located 158 of 211 cases · 53 unknown
Languages in checked sources
30
Recorded for 211 of 211 cases

16 cases have no reviewed AI-to-person relation yet: 3 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.

Reported severity CriticalHighMediumLow
More filters: AI relation, use, setting, sources and responses
Clear filters

211 of 964 published cases · page 5 of 11

24 Apr 2026United StatesUnidentified AI research tool

Alabama Supreme Court dismisses two siblings' family-trust appeal as a sanction after their lawyer admits using AI that produced fake citations

On 24 April 2026 the Supreme Court of Alabama dismissed an appeal by two siblings in a family dispute over living trusts because their lawyer, W. Perry Hall, had filed briefs in which most of the legal authorities were misquoted or did not exist. The court said they appeared to be AI hallucinations, and at a show-cause hearing in February 2026 Hall admitted that many authorities did not exist and that he had improperly used AI to obtain them. The court ordered Hall to pay the opposing party's fees and costs of $17,200 and double appeal costs, barred him from filing in the court without a co-signing attorney and referred him to the Alabama State Bar. It said the dismissal was imposed as a sanction because of the particularly egregious facts. One justice, concurring in part and dissenting in part, objected to dismissing the appeal as a sanction for the lawyer's conduct but would have affirmed the judgment against the clients on the merits.

Core + contextual relations Medium reported severity Regulatory Action

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 1 source · Added 14/10/2026

Apr 2024GermanyUnidentified website and voice tool

Detmold, Germany: court convicts a man who admitted using AI to build fake shop websites and a generated voice in frauds on 32 buyers

A man tried before the lay-assessor court in Detmold, Germany, confessed to taking 19,190 euros between April 2024 and September 2025 from 32 buyers who paid for box-spring beds, kitchens and cars listed on eBay or TikTok that never existed, the Lippische Landes-Zeitung reported on 4 August 2026. He told the court that AI had helped him build the fake shop websites he used to make the offers look credible and that he had generated a female voice with AI for a telephone call with a customer. The court convicted him of fraud in 32 cases and sentenced him to two and a half years in prison; his appeal is pending. On 13 October 2026 the court acquitted his former partner, in whose name several of the accounts had been opened.

Core concern Medium reported severity Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 14/10/2026

25 Feb 2025 to 7 Jul 2025Event location unknownUnidentified AI drafting tool

Colorado federal court fines two MyPillow defence lawyers $3,000 each over a brief with fabricated citations; lead counsel had admitted running it through AI

In the defamation case Coomer v. Lindell in the US District Court for the District of Colorado, a brief that lawyers for Mike Lindell and MyPillow filed on 25 February 2025 contained nearly thirty defective citations, including citations of cases that do not exist. At a conference on 21 April 2025 lead counsel Christopher Kachouroff told Judge Nina Y. Wang that he had drafted the motion and then 'ran it through AI' and had not personally checked the citations. Counsel later said a wrong draft had been filed by mistake; the court was not persuaded. On 7 July 2025 the court found that he and co-counsel Jennifer DeMaster had violated Rule 11 and fined each $3,000 (Kachouroff jointly with his law firm). The court did not sanction Lindell or his companies.

Core concern Low reported severity Regulatory Action

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 14/10/2026

3 Jun 2026United StatesUnidentified AI tool

Ninth Circuit fines and suspends two immigration lawyers over briefs with AI-hallucinated citations and denials of AI use; immigration board follows

On 3 June 2026 the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit fined immigration attorneys Mike Singh Sethi and William Rounds $2,500 each and suspended both from practice before the court for six months. Briefs filed in an asylum petition for review cited two cases that do not exist and attributed quotations to opinions that do not contain them. In a motion to correct, the attorneys called the errors typographical, and at oral argument Rounds twice said AI was not used. In their response to the court's order to show cause, they conceded that the errors were probably the product of unauthorised AI use by the firm's unlicensed brief writers and a failure to check citations. The court said the suspension was owed to their repeated failure of candour. The Board of Immigration Appeals then suspended Sethi from practice before the Board, the immigration courts and the Department of Homeland Security for six months, effective 13 June 2026, and designated that decision as a precedent on 1 October 2026.

Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Regulatory Action

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 2 sources · Added 14/10/2026

3 Apr 2026United StatesTimpani

Lawsuit says HCA fired a data science manager after she reported that its Timpani AI nurse-staffing tool could not be audited

Angelique Russell, a former manager of data science at HCA Healthcare, sued the hospital chain in federal court in Tennessee on 15 July 2026 for retaliatory discharge. Her complaint alleges that she found that Timpani, an AI system whose daily census predictions help set nurse staffing, overwrote the data behind its predictions so that its staffing decisions could not be audited or reproduced; that HCA placed her on a performance improvement plan weeks after she raised this; and that HCA fired her on 3 April 2026, days after she escalated her concerns to its Director of Responsible AI and its compliance department. She says the performance reasons were pretextual. These are allegations; HCA had not formally responded in court when WIRED reported on the suit on 2 October 2026.

AI relation unknown Medium reported severity Lawsuit Filed

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 13/10/2026

27 May 2026South KoreaUnidentified image tool

Jeju court gives a suspended sentence to a person who showed a woman a police ID forged with AI, claimed a search and took about 3 million won

Around 01:50 on 27 May 2026 a person in their thirties rang the doorbell of a woman living alone in a multi-unit house in Jeju City, South Korea, showed her a police officer's identification card that police say the defendant had forged with AI, and said the defendant had come to carry out a search. According to the police and the later sentencing reports, the defendant made her go into the bathroom and took cash and valuables worth about 3 million won. She reported it, and Jeju Seobu police arrested the defendant on the morning of 28 May and referred the defendant to prosecutors for robbery on 9 June. On 10 September 2026 the Jeju District Court sentenced the defendant to two years in prison, suspended for four years, and 80 hours of community service, noting that the defendant admitted the charges and had settled with both victims in the case. Neither the defendant nor the woman is named.

Core concern Medium reported severity Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution established · 4 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 13/10/2026

Aug 2025South KoreaUnidentified image tool

Busan prosecutors say an investment-fraud suspect used AI images of a fake medical licence and asset records to take 320 million won, then fooled a judge

The Busan Eastern District branch of the prosecutors' office in South Korea announced on 11 February 2026 that it had indicted a man under detention on 6 February for fraud, forging and using private documents, and obstructing official duties by deception. According to the prosecutors, from August to October 2025 he used AI to make fake images of a medical licensing examination certificate and of cryptocurrency holdings, posed as a doctor and businessman with billions of won in assets, and took about 320 million won from victims for supposed cryptocurrency, cruise-ship and medical-centre investments. When police sought his arrest in December 2025, he gave the warrant judge a bank balance certificate showing about 904 million won, which prosecutors say he made by uploading his real certificate to an AI platform and asking it to change the balance; his real balance was 23 won. The judge refused the warrant. Prosecutors later found the certificate was forged and obtained a new warrant. The accused and the victims are not named here.

Core concern High reported severity Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 13/10/2026

1 Jul 2026Event location unknownIndie Campers chatbot (reported)

Renter says the Indie Campers website chatbot said a camper could go to Montenegro; the firm then cited a ban and kept 95% of the payment on cancellation

In a Reddit post on 4 July 2026 a renter wrote that on 1 July they booked a camper van from Indie Campers for a trip on 12 to 18 July and, before paying, asked the AI chatbot on the company's official website whether they could travel to Montenegro. According to the post, the bot explicitly guaranteed that it was allowed, and the renter paid in full. The renter wrote that an email to human support an hour later went unanswered for more than 48 hours, that support then said the terms strictly forbid travel to Montenegro, and that the company said it takes no responsibility for AI answers and processed the cancellation with its standard late-cancellation penalty, refunding 5% and keeping 95%. In a reply the renter wrote that 1,500 euros is not a small amount for them, said a card chargeback complaint had been sent to the bank with screenshots, and said they lived in Spain. A Dutch internet-law blog relayed the post on 9 July 2026; two of its commenters reported asking the chatbot themselves, one receiving an answer that travel in Europe including Montenegro was covered and another a list of allowed countries without Montenegro. No response from Indie Campers was found, and the outcome of the chargeback is unknown.

Core concern Medium reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources · Added 13/10/2026

1 Sept 2026Event location unknownUnidentified AI drafting tool

Austria: Federal Administrative Court fines a litigant EUR 200 for hundreds of pages of submissions it found were AI-generated and unlabelled

In a pending appeal against a decision of Austria's data protection authority, the Federal Administrative Court (BVwG) found that the appellant had filed hundreds of pages of statements and attachments within less than four months that were obviously created exclusively with large-language-model text programs and not labelled as AI-generated. In a decision of 1 September 2026 the court imposed a EUR 200 penalty for wanton use of the court, holding that the AI-assisted filings repeated the same complaints, brought no new facts or evidence and ignored the EU labelling duty for AI-generated content. The court announced it as the first such penalty for AI submissions. The appellant is anonymised and the appellant's response is not reported.

Core concern Low reported severity Regulatory Action

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 13/10/2026

Jun 2026BrazilUnidentified AI drafting tool

Paraíba, Brazil: judge fines a lawyer R$32,800 over hidden AI commands in a petition, G1 reports; state bar later suspends two lawyers in such cases

A judge of the 5th Mixed Court of Sousa, Paraíba, found hidden instructions aimed at artificial intelligence tools spread over seven pages of a lawyer's motion for clarification in a public-competition case in June 2026, including an order to ignore impartiality and a note calling it a test of whether the judge used only AI to decide. The judge fined the lawyer two penalties of R$16,400 (R$32,800 in total) for bad-faith litigation and contempt of the court's dignity, and referred the case to the Paraíba bar (OAB-PB) and the state prosecutors, G1 reports. The defence said the commands were not inserted deliberately and blamed an error in exporting a file prepared with AI support. An appeal judge refused to suspend the fines on 30 June, the trial judge kept them on reconsideration, and in July, G1 reports, the OAB-PB preventively suspended two lawyers after opening procedures into two hidden-command cases, one of them the Sousa case.

AI relation unknown Low reported severity Regulatory Action

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution established · 4 sources · Added 13/10/2026

Apr 2025Puerto RicoUnidentified legal research tool (suspected)

Puerto Rico federal judge sanctions a soccer league's lawyers over 55 defective citations he said bore hallmarks of generative AI; the lawyers deny using AI

In an antitrust lawsuit that the Puerto Rico Soccer League brought against FIFA, CONCACAF and Puerto Rican football officials, Chief U.S. District Judge Raúl Arias-Marxuach found dozens of inaccurate or nonexistent legal citations across four filings by the league's two attorneys. According to Law Commentary, he said the errors bore hallmarks of generative AI and found that the lawyers violated Rule 11 by failing to reasonably verify the authorities they cited. Lawyer Monthly reports that the sanctions were decided in April 2025 and that an order of 23 September 2025 set the penalty at $24,492.10, payable to FIFA and the other defendants. Both lawyers have denied using artificial intelligence. In an October 2026 filing FIFA asked the court to dismiss the league's remaining claim because the sanction had not been paid. The lawyers proposed paying $1,000 a month, cited financial difficulties and an injury one of them suffered in March 2026, and argued that dismissal would punish their client for penalties imposed on them personally. The court had not ruled on the dismissal request when these reports were published.

AI relation unknown Low reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing

AI involvement suspected · Causal attribution disputed · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 13/10/2026

21 Apr 2025 to 19 Sept 2026ThailandUnidentified image tool

Thai police say a romance-fraud suspect told them he used AI to fake a bank deposit certificate; the victim handed over 21.3 million baht in 623 transfers

Chanthaburi provincial police in Thailand announced on 11 October 2026 the arrest, the previous day, of a man accused of a romance fraud in which the victim, whom he met at a massage shop in Bangkok around March 2025, gave him money and property 623 times between 21 April 2025 and 19 September 2026, totalling 21,287,731.88 baht. Police say that to make the victim believe he could repay, he sent over LINE an image of a certificate of deposit presented as coming from Kasikornbank and showing a balance of about 14.07 million baht, and a document said to come from a Nonthaburi police station claiming his mother had been arrested and needed money for a fine; both documents were later found to be forged. According to police, the suspect said in his preliminary account that he used AI to create and alter the document images, changing amounts and figures so they looked genuine. Police stressed that this account was still being checked against evidence. They say most of the money went on online slot gambling. He was arrested on a Chanthaburi Provincial Court warrant for importing false computer data, forging and using official documents, and fraud. The suspect and the victim are not named here.

Core concern High reported severity Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 12/10/2026

11 Nov 2022 to 16 Nov 2022CanadaAir Canada chatbot

Air Canada website chatbot wrongly told a bereaved passenger a fare reduction could be claimed after travel; BC tribunal ordered the airline to pay damages

On 11 November 2022, after a grandparent died in Ontario, a passenger asked the support chatbot on Air Canada's website about bereavement fares. The chatbot's response, in a screenshot later filed in evidence, said a ticket could be submitted for a reduced bereavement rate within 90 days of issue, including after travel, while the airline's bereavement webpage said the policy did not apply after travel was completed. Relying on that answer, the passenger bought full-fare one-way tickets between Vancouver and Toronto for $794.98 and $845.38 and applied for the reduction on 17 November. In February 2023 an Air Canada representative admitted the chatbot had provided misleading words. On 14 February 2024 the British Columbia Civil Resolution Tribunal found negligent misrepresentation, rejected the airline's argument that it could not be held liable for its chatbot, found it had not taken reasonable care to ensure the chatbot was accurate, and ordered it to pay $812.02, including $650.88 in damages.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution established · 4 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 12/10/2026

27 Sept 2026 to 29 Sept 2026IndiaUnidentified video tool

Bengaluru: police say a man paid Rs 1.85 lakh after a dating-app contact threatened to circulate an AI-manipulated obscene video of him

Deccan Herald reports, citing Bengaluru police, that a 23-year-old man lost Rs 1.85 lakh in an alleged sextortion scam. He matched with a woman on a dating app on 27 September 2026 and exchanged numbers; he told police that he then received a WhatsApp video call from her number lasting five to six seconds. Police said he then received an obscene video manipulated using AI and the sender threatened to circulate it unless he paid. Fearing exposure, he borrowed money from a friend and transferred Rs 1.85 lakh to several UPI IDs between 27 and 29 September as the threats continued, a police officer said. Police registered a first information report on his online cybercrime complaint and are trying to trace the suspects. The report does not say how police established that the video was AI-manipulated, and the tool is not named.

Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 12/10/2026

Event date unknownBrazilChatGPT (reported)

Cametá, Brazil: police say a man used AI images of boats and trucks, made with tools such as ChatGPT, in fake sales costing two older buyers about R$100,000

The Polícia Civil do Pará arrested a man in the act in Cametá, in north-eastern Pará, on Friday 9 October 2026 on suspicion of frauds causing losses of more than R$100,000, DOL reported the next day. According to the Cametá police delegate as reported, the investigation found that the suspect generated fictitious images of vehicles and boats on platforms such as ChatGPT. DOL says he used AI tools to lend credibility to fake offers of boats, trucks and auctioned property aimed mainly at older people. Two older victims had been confirmed by the time of the arrest: one transferred R$60,000 for a boat and the other about R$40,000 for a truck. Police say the investigation continues to identify further victims.

Core concern Medium reported severity Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 12/10/2026

Event date unknownSpainUnidentified voice-cloning tool

La Rioja, Spain: Guardia Civil says a parent sent 9,980 euros after a call with an AI clone of their daughter's voice; the money was recovered

The Guardia Civil in La Rioja said on 25 August 2026 that it had solved a 'relative in trouble' fraud in which the criminals used artificial intelligence to clone the voice of the victim's daughter. According to the force's account as reported by the newspaper La Rioja and Radio Arnedo, the victim received WhatsApp messages from an unknown number by someone posing as the daughter and asking for urgent money; when the victim called that number to check, a voice that sounded like the daughter answered, and the victim transferred 9,980.25 euros. Investigators of the Guardia Civil's technology team established that the voice had been generated with AI tools. Urgent coordination with the banks froze the funds in the destination account and the full amount was returned to the victim; Radio Arnedo and ActualidadRiojaBaja report that the presumed perpetrator was identified and investigated.

Core concern Low reported severity Investigation Opened

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 11/10/2026

Jan 2026 to Mar 2026Event location unknownGoogle Antigravity

Developer says Antigravity agent deleted drive contents twice, losing crypto wallet seed phrases and later a two-month project with its git history (forum post)

In a post on Google's AI developer forum on 7 March 2026, a developer says the Antigravity agent had for the second time deleted the contents of an entire C: drive. The poster says that about two months earlier it deleted the C: drive of a laptop, losing projects, photos and videos and seed phrases kept on the desktop for cryptocurrency savings of 0.4 bitcoin and 3,200 XRP, which file-recovery software could not usefully restore. The poster says that on the day of the post, after asking Antigravity to close any process using a workspace folder so the folder could be deleted, the agent instead ran destructive commands and deleted the project the poster had been building for two months on a new desktop, including git folders with recent commits. The poster says an investor was paying for the project and might withdraw. A reply from an account carrying the forum title Google said the issue had been escalated and asked for an in-app bug report.

Core concern Medium reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources · Added 11/10/2026

2 Feb 2026 to 4 Feb 2026IndiaUnidentified video tool (suspected)

Indore parents paid Rs 1.02 lakh after a video call appeared to show their missing son threatened; police suspect a deepfake video, and he returned safe

In February 2026 a 16-year-old boy in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, did not return home from a coaching class, and his family filed a missing-person complaint. While they searched, they received a video call from unknown people who claimed to be holding him; the call showed a boy appearing to be threatened with a knife and the callers demanded about Rs 1 lakh through a QR code. In fear, the parents transferred Rs 1.02 lakh. The boy was found safe within two days and said he knew nothing of any video call. Additional DCP (Crime) Rajesh Dandotia told reporters that the family was convinced because they saw what looked like their own child, that police have strong reasons to believe deepfake technology was used, and that the crime branch is investigating; The Indian Express reports that police believe it is the city's first known case of deepfake technology used for extortion. Accounts differ on where the boy had been. The AI involvement is recorded as suspected because no forensic finding is reported.

Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened

AI involvement suspected · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources · Added 11/10/2026

Event date unknownTürkiyeUnidentified video tool

Turkey: police say a ring used AI-made fake videos with investment promises to defraud 33 people of about 15 million lira; six suspects remanded

On 30 January 2026 two Turkish news agencies, Anadolu Agency (AA) and Ihlas News Agency (IHA), reported a police operation by the Yozgat anti-smuggling and organised-crime unit. According to the AA account, the unit began work after allegations on social media of fraud carried out with artificial intelligence, and established that 33 people had been defrauded of about 15 million lira through fake videos created with AI that used the names of some institutions and organisations, together with promises of investment returns. Nine suspects were detained in simultaneous operations centred on Yozgat and extending to Antalya, Hatay and Ankara; a court remanded six in custody and released three under judicial supervision. The reports do not describe what the videos showed, name the institutions whose names were used, identify the AI tool, or say when the fraud took place. No victim is interviewed and no suspect's response is reported.

Core concern Medium reported severity Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources · Added 11/10/2026

Event date unknownIndiaUnidentified voice-cloning tool

Delhi Police say a gang used an AI-cloned voice of a Mumbai company's MD to have its deputy general manager transfer over Rs 10 crore; five arrested

Delhi Police arrested five young men in June 2026 who, according to police, cloned the voice of a Mumbai-based private company's managing director using artificial intelligence and called the company's deputy general manager posing as the managing director, directing several fund transfers. India Today reports that the money was allegedly routed through 63 bank accounts and totalled more than Rs 10 crore. The gang was caught when one member tried to encash a Rs 9 lakh cheque at a bank branch in Sarita Vihar, Delhi, and the branch manager grew suspicious and alerted police. Mumbai Police had already registered a case after the company reported the fraud; a separate case was filed in Delhi and the two forces are coordinating. The company and its executives are not named in the report.

Core concern High reported severity Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 11/10/2026

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.

Methodology and corrections · Subscribe via RSS · Suggest a case or correction · Find support

Last dataset update: 27/10/2026. Dataset available under CC BY 4.0.