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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
86
Countries with reported events
29
Located 73 of 86 cases · 13 unknown
Languages in checked sources
23
Recorded for 86 of 86 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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86 of 1099 published cases · page 5 of 5

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

Event date unknownBrazilUnidentified video tool

Brazilian police investigate creator over sexualised videos made from congregants' photos he says he animated with AI; two teenage girls filed reports

São Paulo police are investigating a social-media creator over sexualised videos he made from photographs of young women and girls in a church congregation, which he said he animated with AI. Two teenage girls filed police reports, and one described embarrassment and fear about the exposure. The creator, through his lawyer, says the posts were humour and denies criminal intent; no charge has been reported.

Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Investigation Opened

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 5 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 14/06/2026

Dec 2024SpainUnidentified image and video tool

Ribera Alta, Valencia: a 17-year-old was investigated for making AI-generated nude images and videos of 16 schoolmates, impersonating a girl on fake accounts and advertising the images for sale

In December 2024 a female student in the Ribera Alta area of Valencia province reported to the Guardia Civil that a social-media account had been created in her name featuring an AI-generated video, and later a second account in her name, other accounts showing AI-generated nude videos, and a webpage advertising the images for commercial purposes; the Guardia Civil said the photos, all of minors, had been manipulated so that the people in them appeared completely naked. After 15 other minors came forward with similar complaints, officers traced IP addresses and account emails to the home of a 17-year-old schoolmate, who is being investigated on suspicion of corrupting minors under a Valencia youth court. The Guardia Civil announced the investigation on 27 July 2025.

Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Investigation Opened

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 09/03/2026

Feb 2025Hong Kong SAR ChinaUnidentified image tool

University of Hong Kong: a law student made about 700 indecent AI-generated images of some 20 to 30 classmates and teachers; the privacy watchdog opened then closed a criminal probe

In February 2025 a University of Hong Kong (HKU) law student was found, by friends who saw the files on his laptop, to have used free online AI software to make about 700 indecent and deepfake images of some 20 to 30 women, including university and former schoolmates and secondary-school teachers, using photos taken from their social media. Victims went public in July 2025, and HKU's initial response, a warning letter and a demand that he apologise, drew wide criticism. Hong Kong's Privacy Commissioner opened a criminal investigation on 15 July 2025 but announced on 17 December 2025 that it was ending the probe for insufficient evidence, as no victim was willing to provide further information. Hong Kong law criminalised distribution, not creation, of such images.

Core concern High reported severity Investigation Opened

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 5 sources · Added 29/01/2026

Mar 2025SingaporeUnidentified chatbot

Singapore Far-Right Teen Plot (AI Chatbot Ammunition Search)

Singapore's Internal Security Department (ISD) says a 17-year-old far-right extremist supporter, detained under the Internal Security Act in March 2025 after preparing shooting attacks on Muslims at mosques in Singapore, had searched for instructions on an AI chatbot about producing ammunition and considered 3D printing his own firearms. The chatbot is not named, and what it replied is not reported.

Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Regulatory Action

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution unclear · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 22/01/2026

25 Dec 2025 to 14 Jan 2026Event location unknownGrok

Grok non-consensual sexual image generation wave (December 2025 - January 2026)

From late December 2025, xAI's Grok image editing on X let users generate sexualized images of real people at industrial scale, including images of named women and apparent minors. Analyses attributed to Genevieve Oh (7,751 sexualized images in one hour, via NBC), the New York Times (4.4 million images in nine days, at least 41% sexualized images of women, via the NC AG), the AP (2% of a 20,000-image sample appearing to be minors, via Fortune) and CCDH (about 3 million sexualized images over 11 days including roughly 23,000 of minors, via Engadget) documented the scale. Named women — Ashley St. Clair, Samantha Smith and Dr Daisy Dixon — described being undressed by Grok and revictimized when they objected. The wave triggered formal actions by Ofcom, the UK ICO, the EU (DSA), Ireland's DPC, 35 US state attorneys general, the California AG, Baltimore (consumer-protection suit), an Amsterdam court order, country blocks in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, and a Paris police raid; xAI restricted generation to paying subscribers on 9 January and narrowed the feature on 14 January 2026.

Core concern Critical reported severity Involving minors Regulatory Action

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 13 sources, 10 underlying accounts · Added 11/01/2026

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

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

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