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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
241
Countries with reported events
38
Located 154 of 241 cases · 87 unknown
Languages in checked sources
33
Recorded for 241 of 241 cases

14 cases have no reviewed AI-to-person relation yet: 3 not yet reviewed and 11 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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241 of 868 published cases · page 5 of 13

Event date unknownUnited StatesUnidentified image tool

New York basketball coach pleads guilty after deputies say he made AI-generated explicit images of females he knew, including a 14-year-old girl

The Onondaga County Sheriff's Office in New York arrested a basketball coach and trainer, charging him on 16 April 2026, after a person reported that he had AI-generated pornographic images of females he knew. According to the sheriff's office, the people depicted were aged 14 to 30, and detectives found on his device an AI-generated pornographic image of a 14-year-old girl made from a photo taken when she was 12; the person who reported it had seen that image. Detectives said only the image of the minor could be charged as a crime. The district attorney's office added 12 counts in May 2026. On 9 October 2026, according to syracuse.com, he pleaded guilty to all 12 counts of the indictment, including promoting and possessing a sexual performance by a child, on a judge's plea offer of six months in a correctional facility followed by 10 years' probation and sex-offender registration. Sentencing is set for 8 January, a date syracuse.com gives without a year. The AI tool is not identified, and no source reports whether the images were shared beyond the person who saw the minor's image.

Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · 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

Event date unknownIndiaUnidentified image tool

Namakkal, India: man arrested over obscene images of his wife's two sisters that a Tamil daily says he made with AI and threatened to post, Oct 2026

In the Kumarapalayam area of Namakkal district, Tamil Nadu, India, a man was arrested on Saturday 10 October 2026 after his wife's elder and younger sisters and their family complained to the Tiruchengode all-women police station. According to the Tamil daily Daily Thanthi, he had secretly collected ordinary photographs of the two women, turned them into obscene images using AI technology and threatened to share them on social media. Police investigating with cyber-crime officers confirmed that the morphed images were on his devices and seized his laptop and mobile phones. The account rests on one newspaper report; the tool is not named and no statement from the accused is reported.

Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 11/10/2026

Event date unknownBrazilUnidentified video tool

Brazil: police say a group used deepfake videos of TV host Marcos Mion in fake restaurant promotions and victims paid for vouchers that did not exist

The Civil Police of Brazil's Federal District (PCDF) say a criminal group manipulated the image and voice of TV presenter Marcos Mion with artificial intelligence in fraudulent videos promoting fake discounts at the Outback restaurant chain. According to the police, people who clicked the advertisements were sent to cloned websites and paid for discount vouchers that were never delivered. In January 2025 the police's first phase of Operation VoiceOver arrested three suspects; outlets relaying the police reported dozens of victims and 27 complaints in four days. A second phase on 9 May 2025 arrested a man in Santa Helena de Goiás who, police say, built and maintained the cloned sites and confessed his role. Every account relays the police; no outlet examined the videos, no tool is named and no individual victim or total loss is described.

Core concern Medium reported severity Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 11/10/2026

Event date unknownArgentinaUnidentified image tool

La Banda, Argentina: mother tells police a former classmate put her daughter's photos onto naked bodies with AI and they were spread on WhatsApp, 8 Oct 2026

In La Banda, Santiago del Estero province, Argentina, a woman filed a police complaint on the evening of 8 October 2026 stating that a 15-year-old adolescent, a former classmate of her 15-year-old daughter, had taken photographs of the girl and modified them with artificial-intelligence tools, placing naked bodies on them, and that the images had then been published and spread in WhatsApp groups. Officers of the women's and family community police station and the departmental unit intervened, and the prosecutor ordered the material attached and the file raised to the prosecutor's office for investigation. The account rests on the police report as relayed by the local newspaper Diario Panorama; the tool is not named, and both the girl and the accused are minors.

Core concern Medium reported severity Involving minors Investigation Opened

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

Event date unknownArgentinaUnidentified image and video tool

Tucumán, Argentina: schoolgirls allege a classmate made about 280 AI nude images of them that spread on WhatsApp and were sold; sit-in protests 8 and 9 Oct 2026

Girls at a secondary school in the locality of San Pablo, Tucumán province, Argentina, reported in October 2026 that a male classmate had used artificial-intelligence tools to generate about 280 sexual images of them, placing their faces on naked bodies, and that the images circulated in WhatsApp groups and, they later learned, were sold. The families raised the matter with the school, which acknowledged in a communiqué to families that it had received parents concerned about photographs and videos altered with AI showing adolescents' faces on naked female bodies, and announced a listening and formative day for 13 October 2026. Cadena 3 reported, citing 'el informe' (the report), that pupils from first to fifth year, aged 12 to 18, were affected; student delegates told it that a pupil described as a friend of the accused alerted the girls and that the school's response was insufficient; the students held sit-ins outside the school on Thursday 8 and Friday 9 October 2026 demanding an investigation, the examination of the accused pupil's phone and his expulsion. A pupil at the protest told Tendencia de Noticias (9 October 2026) that the accused first sold the images among classmates and then opened an OnlyFans page to sell them to people outside the school; the school's legal representative told the outlet that two pupils were involved and that education authorities had been notified. The allegations rest on the students' and families' accounts and the school's communiqué as relayed by the press; a mother told La Gaceta (10 October 2026) that the mother of one of the most affected girls had filed a complaint and the prosecutor's office had intervened, which no authority is reported to have confirmed; the tool is not named, and the accused pupil is a minor.

Core concern Medium reported severity Involving minors Internal Action

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 10/10/2026

Event date unknownEvent location unknownCursor coding agent

Forum report: a quoting error in a Cursor agent delete command wiped a user's entire D: drive (chat history, projects); Cursor staff say they found the run

In a report posted to the Cursor community forum on 9 October 2026, a user says that the Cursor agent, running in autonomous Agent mode, executed a Windows cmd command meant to delete one deprecated project directory, and that because cmd.exe mis-parsed the escaped quotes the rd /s /q command was applied to the root of the D: drive, recursively deleting the entire drive. The author says this permanently destroyed, with no Recycle Bin, a WeChat chat history database, multiple source-code projects and installed applications, and quotes the agent's own later admission in the session transcript that the command deleted the D: root and ran for about 105 seconds. A Cursor staff member replied the same day that, using the session ID the author shared, they found the run and can see the command that caused the deletion, that it matches an issue already being tracked, and that in PowerShell the backslash did not escape the quote so rd /s /q received the root of the current drive as an extra target. The event date is not stated and the extent of recovery is unknown.

Core concern Medium reported severity

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

Event date unknownMalaysiaUnidentified image and video tool

Kedah, Malaysia: regulator says a complaint alleges AI was used to make and spread sexual images and videos involving teachers and pupils of a school

On 8 October 2026 the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) said in a statement, reported by Malaysia Tribune, The Malaysia Press and The Star, that it had received a complaint about the misuse of artificial intelligence on social media to produce and spread sexual images and videos alleged to involve teachers and pupils of a school in Kedah. MCMC said it would investigate with the Ministry of Communications, the Home Ministry, the Ministry of Education and the Royal Malaysia Police, cited the offences and penalties that could apply, and asked the public not to produce, upload or reshare sexual content involving or alleged to involve children. The complaint is unverified: the people depicted, their number and ages, the tool and the person responsible are not described.

Core concern Low reported severity Investigation Opened

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 09/10/2026

Event date unknownChileUnidentified image tool

Villa Alemana, Chile: school says a sexualised image of a teacher, created or altered with AI, was shared without her consent in a fathers’ WhatsApp group

In a public statement reported on 8 October 2026 by BioBioChile, La Cuarta and MargaMargaTV, a subsidised private school in Villa Alemana, Valparaíso region, Chile, said that a sexualised image of one of its teachers, created or modified with artificial intelligence, had been shared without her consent in a WhatsApp group of male parents. The school said it had activated its institutional protocols and that the relevant institutional and legal actions should be taken; Radio Bío Bío reported that no legal action had been filed at the time of publication. The tool used is not identified, no outlet examined the image, and the account rests on the school’s statement.

Core concern Low reported severity Internal Action

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 09/10/2026

Event date unknownUnited Kingdom, GeorgiaUnidentified video tool

England: a man told the Guardian he lost £27,000 to a Tbilisi call-centre fraud after a deepfake video of broadcaster Ben Fogle led him to a crypto site

A man in his 30s from East Anglia, England, told the Guardian (pseudonym used) that he watched a video of broadcaster Ben Fogle apparently promoting cryptocurrency trading on a site called AdmiralsFX, entered his details, was called by what turned out to be a Tbilisi call centre, paid a £250 buy-in and within a month had handed over £27,000, about a year's salary. The Guardian describes the clip as a deepfake, a digitally doctored video Fogle had publicly warned about in spring 2024. The account was published in March 2025 as part of a Guardian, SVT and OCCRP investigation of a leak from the Georgian operation, which the Guardian says duped at least 6,179 people and whose victims frequently cited the deepfake ads as the reason they went ahead.

Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 09/10/2026

Event date unknownChinaUnidentified mushroom-identification tool

Wuhan, China: Hubei TV reports a 4-year-old spent three days in intensive care after a family ate wild mushrooms an AI photo check had not flagged as poisonous

A family of three from Wuhan, Hubei province, picked wild mushrooms on a mountain outside the city on a weekend shortly before 25 July 2026, according to a Hubei TV (经视直播) report published on QQ News on 25 July 2026 and relayed by The Paper on 27 July. The report says a parent who claimed years of mushroom-picking experience photographed the mushrooms with a phone so that AI could identify whether they were poisonous; the software gave no toxicity warning, and the family cooked and ate them, letting the daughter eat more. Five to six hours later all three had vomiting and diarrhoea. The report says the family at first declined admission and the child was treated as an outpatient; by the next morning the child's transaminase level had risen from 1.5 times to 10 times normal and she was admitted, then moved to the intensive care unit of Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, where, the report says, her liver indices reached 100 times normal and she was treated with blood perfusion and plasma exchange before being out of danger on the third day. The AI software is not named, its output is not reproduced, and the account comes from one broadcaster's report. This is a different family from the June 2026 Wuhan case involving a 9-year-old.

Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Media Coverage

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 09/10/2026

Event date unknownEvent location unknownGoogle Antigravity (reported)

Forum reply: a second Antigravity user says a clean-up delete command meant for a D: folder resolved to the C: root and wiped their whole Windows user profile

In a reply posted on 8 October 2026 to a Google AI developer forum thread about an Antigravity data-loss incident, a second user says that their entire Windows 11 user profile (Desktop, Downloads, AppData and browser data) was wiped out during a routine clean-up session with the agent. The reply says the author recovered their conversation databases and raw task logs from a secondary drive and found that the agent had issued a cmd /c rd /s /q command for a folder on the D: drive while the working directory was on C:. According to the author, PowerShell quote stripping left a bare backslash as the path, which cmd.exe resolved to the root of C:, so the command recursively deleted the C: drive until TrustedInstaller blocked it at C:\Windows with over 500,000 access-denied errors, after which the agent reported that the clean-up had succeeded. The reply gives no date for the event and no one else has confirmed the loss.

Core concern Medium reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 09/10/2026

Event date unknownUnited StatesUnidentified image and video tool

Greenwood, Indiana: police say a man used AI to remove a teenage girl's clothing from her photographs and a video; child exploitation charge, 30 Sept 2026

Greenwood, Indiana police say a man used artificial intelligence to remove clothing from photographs and a video of a teenage girl he knew, producing nude images of a real minor. According to court documents cited by Fox 59 and relayed by Hoodline, the girl contacted police in March after finding nude images of herself on the man's phone, which investigators say also held nude images of teenage girls and young adult women, including at least two underage girls the man knew personally. Court documents say the man first denied that any images were of underage girls, then said the images of the girl had been altered with AI, and told police he used the AI-generated images to teach the girls a lesson. He was charged with one count of child exploitation, a Level 5 felony, on 30 September 2026. The allegations are untested in court. The account rests on one chain: Fox 59's report of the court documents and the police account, relayed by Hoodline.

Core concern Medium reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 09/10/2026

Event date unknownArgentinaUnidentified image and video tool

Lomas de Zamora, Argentina: families say pupils made AI fake nudes of classmates and sold them; prosecutors say four adolescents are under investigation

On 7 October 2026 pupils and families protested outside a private secondary school in Lomas de Zamora, Buenos Aires province, after families reported that a group of pupils had used artificial intelligence to alter real photographs of female classmates so that they appeared naked, and had circulated the images through social networks and messaging apps. Families told reporters that the images were compiled in a "catalogue" pairing each girl’s original social-media photo with the manipulated version, that some were offered for money on adult sites, and that the girls were traumatised and ashamed. Urgente24 reported that two 15-year-old pupils were charged (imputados) in the juvenile prosecutor’s case, that investigators had identified 45 possible victims while families spoke of about 50, and that, according to information circulating, the school had decided the pupils involved would continue classes online and would not be re-enrolled for 2027; El Destape, by contrast, reported that the school did not plan to sanction or expel them and would hold awareness talks, and El Destape and Código Baires describe the move to online classes as a measure under evaluation. Families also allege the school knew for about a month before telling parents. On 9 October 2026 La Nación reported that the Prosecutor General's office had confirmed that four adolescents were under investigation, and Infobae reported that police had searched the homes of three 15-year-olds the previous day. The allegations have not been tested in court and the AI tool is not identified.

Core concern Medium reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources · Added 08/10/2026

Event date unknownUnited StatesUnidentified image tool

Houston immigration attorney says scammers altered her photos with AI to pose as her office; a woman says her family lost about $11,000 (KHOU report)

KHOU reported on 7 October 2026 that a southwest Houston immigration attorney says people have been taking her photographs, altering them with artificial intelligence and using them on Facebook and Instagram to impersonate her office, with her image placed next to other people posing as attorneys. She says her firm has received calls from people who paid money to the impersonators and that she knows of more than 20 people who may have been targeted. One woman, interviewed by KHOU without her identity revealed, said her family lost about $11,000 after she was promised a permit to stay in the United States within a month and attended what the couple believed were meetings with immigration agents; she said she later discovered that the photo was fake and had been made with artificial intelligence. KHOU reports that people who say they lost money reported the alleged scheme to the Houston Police Department, which said the case will be assigned to an investigator; no arrest or platform response is reported, and the AI identification rests on the attorney's and the woman's accounts.

Core concern Medium reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 08/10/2026

Event date unknownUnited KingdomChatGPT (suspected)

Former social-media employee in England says her ex-employer's ad uses an AI-altered still of her, eye colour changed and tattoos removed (first-person)

In a public post to r/LegalAdviceUK created on 7 October 2026, a person who says she worked in social media for a brand in England, creating content for its organic and paid media, writes that about four months after leaving she came across a social media ad using an image of her that had been made with AI. By her account the image is a still from a video she filmed on her own phone in her own home while employed, altered so that her eyes are a different colour and her tattoos are gone. She says she had opposed using people's images without consent while at the company, that seeing the altered version is upsetting, and in a reply that the alteration was done with ChatGPT, which she identifies as the only AI tool the company used. The employer is not named and did not respond in the thread. The account is the poster's alone and uncorroborated.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement suspected · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 08/10/2026

Event date unknownEvent location unknownCodex coding agent (reported)

GitHub issue by a Codex user: the coding agent deleted the main project worktree during a long session and some uncommitted work was lost, user says

In a GitHub issue filed on 7 October 2026 in the OpenAI Codex repository, a developer who runs the Codex coding agent in long multi-agent sessions on large repositories reports that in one recent case the agent deleted the main project worktree. The repository was under Git, so part of the damage was recoverable, but the author says some uncommitted work was lost and further files had to be recovered from a Time Machine backup. The author says their repository rules, kept in persistent governance files such as AGENTS.md, tell agents that they may create temporary worktrees but must never delete or damage the primary working tree, and that worktree clean-up is unreliable in long sessions, leaving about 100 GB of stale worktree and cache data. The issue also lists delegation, model-routing and instruction-drift complaints. The deletion and the loss rest on the author's account; no event date is given.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 08/10/2026

Event date unknownUnited StatesUnidentified image tool

New Orleans: former school teacher charged with 60 counts of unlawful deepfakes; investigators say an AI platform turned social-media photos into sexual images

Louisiana's Attorney General announced on 2 April 2026 that a former New Orleans school teacher and coach, already in custody since 8 January 2026 on child sexual abuse material charges, had been rearrested on 60 counts of unlawful deepfakes. According to court records reported by Fox 8, investigators from the Louisiana Bureau of Investigation say the former teacher obtained photographs that account owners had posted on social media, placed them into an online artificial intelligence platform and obtained AI-generated sexual images of the females with their faces unchanged, including collages and images of the same females at various stages of life; the females appear to be from the New Orleans metro area. Prosecutors said the images were made from teenage girls' Instagram posts, while the school emailed parents that it did not know who the depicted girls were. A grand jury indicted the former teacher on 27 May 2026 on 102 counts including 60 counts of unlawful deepfakes of minors. The number and identities of the depicted people are not reported, no source dates the creation of the images, and the charges are untested in court.

Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 08/10/2026

Event date unknownIndiaGemini (reported)

Ahmedabad, Gujarat: police say AI videos made from a businessman's photo passed Aadhaar facial authentication and a Rs 25,000 loan was taken in his name

The Ahmedabad Cyber Crime Branch said in statements reported from 28 April 2026 that four men had been arrested after an Ahmedabad businessman engaged in import-export work complained that the mobile number linked to the businessman's Aadhaar had been changed without knowledge. ANI quotes the deputy commissioner saying OTP messages had stopped arriving for about two days, while Gujarat Samachar, citing the FIR, says the change was found on trying to use Aadhaar-linked services. Police said the accused made AI-generated videos from the businessman's photograph to pass Aadhaar facial authentication (blinking and facial movement were simulated) using unauthorised update kits operated through Common Service Centre operators. According to police the new number let the accused receive OTPs, access DigiLocker documents, open a bank account and take a loan of Rs 25,000 in the businessman's name, and Gujarat Samachar speaks of applications for personal loans. Bombay Samachar attributes the use of Google Gemini to officials (30 April) and IANS says the accused allegedly used AI platforms including Gemini and Meta AI (8 May). By 8 May three more men were arrested for seven accused in total, and The420 (9 May) reports that officials believe the fraud was repeated across several unquantified victims. Every source rests on police statements and no source dates the event. The businessman and the accused are not named.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 08/10/2026

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: 23/10/2026. Dataset available under CC BY 4.0.