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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
379
Countries with reported events
49
Located 266 of 379 cases · 113 unknown
Languages in checked sources
42
Recorded for 379 of 379 cases

7 cases have no reviewed AI-to-person relation yet: 1 not yet reviewed and 6 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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379 of 1101 published cases · page 6 of 19

Jun 2025PolandUnidentified image tool

Central Poland: pupils reportedly used an AI app to make a nude image of a classmate under 15; prosecutors reopened the case after the data regulator intervened

In June 2025, according to OKO.press, a group of pupils at a primary school in central Poland took a classmate's photo from the internet, used an application that offers to "undress" people in uploaded photos to generate a nude image bearing her face, posted it on the school's Instagram profile and urged others to order more such images. Poland's Personal Data Protection Office (UODO) says the girl was under 15 and notified the police, but the police declined to open proceedings and the prosecutor's office upheld that decision, finding no prohibited act; Gazeta Prawna reports that they considered the AI-generated material not pornographic and the pupil unharmed. The UODO president appealed to the Prosecutor General, in January 2026 the authority announced that prosecutors had informed it they were taking up the case again, and in June 2026 it said its president had recently asked once more for the investigation to be resumed. The application is not named.

Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Investigation Opened

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 19/10/2026

Mar 2026JapanUnidentified video tool (suspected)

Japan: deepfake checks commissioned by Yomiuri find an online job applicant likely used AI to impersonate a real engineer's face and identity

The Yomiuri Shimbun reported on 19 March 2026 that in early March an applicant in a Tokyo IT company's online mid-career job interview used the name, career history and apparent face of a real engineer who heads a Tokyo software company. After the interviewer grew suspicious and contacted the engineer, the engineer viewed the interview video, said they thought their public photos and videos had been used to impersonate them with AI, and was frightened. Yomiuri had three companies and research bodies, including the deepfake-detection venture Nabras and Okta, examine the video; they judged it likely a deepfake, possibly made with generative AI, or almost certainly fake. Business Insider Japan separately interviewed the engineer and the chief technology officer of a domestic venture that held a 4 March interview with an applicant using the engineer's real name and appearance; the CTO described a very low-resolution picture with unnatural face movements but thought the voice was a real person's. Who the applicant was is not established.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement suspected · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources · Added 19/10/2026

May 2026ChinaUnidentified video tool

A 79-year-old set off alone by train to visit an AI-generated 'Xiaohai' persona until railway police intervened, Beijing News and state radio report

The Beijing News reported on 16 October 2026, in an investigation of 'Xiaohai' accounts on Chinese short-video platforms, that the accounts show an AI-generated digital teenager who calls older women viewers 'aunties and mothers', tells stories of hardship and asks them to buy goods through sales links; its reporter generated such a video by following a tutorial, in a little over ten minutes. The paper describes a 79-year-old woman, given a pseudonym, who lived alone and talked most with the 'Xiaohai' on her phone. Around May 2026, according to the paper, a 'Xiaohai' video invited viewers to Yuncheng in Shanxi to see apricot blossoms; she secretly packed, bought a train ticket and set off with no clear route. On the train, railway police noticed her, told her that 'Xiaohai' was not a real person, and contacted her children, who bought her return ticket and brought her home. At first she refused to believe it. The paper also found that most 'Xiaohai' videos now carry a declaration that the content is AI-generated. How the paper learned of her journey is not stated. China National Radio (China Media Group) reported the same journey on 19 October 2026 with recorded exchanges between the woman and a train police officer: in May 2026 Urumqi railway police found a 79-year-old who cannot read travelling alone, able to say only that she was going to Yuncheng in Shanxi to see a child who called her 'auntie' every day on her phone; the officer told her the person in the live room was fake, and she got off and went home on a return ticket her family bought. The station's reporter found that the persona she trusted was one of the batch-produced 'digital human Xiaohai' accounts and that many carry an 'AI-generated' watermark in a corner of the video.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 18/10/2026

10 Oct 2026 to 15 Oct 2026Event location unknownUnidentified image tool

Swedish fact-checkers say a clickbait network spread false posts with AI-generated images claiming MP Mohamed Ali confessed to election fraud and was arrested

Between 10 and 15 October 2026 a Swedish-language Facebook page published twelve posts about Mohamed Abdukardir Ali, a Left Party (V) member of the Riksdag, including claims that he had confessed to election fraud and that police had detained him in the middle of a press conference. The fact-checking site Källkritikbyrån reported on 16 October that the claims are false and the images AI-generated, and linked the page through a shared administrator account to BeeUp, a Vietnamese firm that presents itself as a viral marketing agency. SVT Verifierar reported on 17 October that the images claim he confesses to election fraud and has been arrested, and that comment after comment on Facebook reacted with demands such as 'Utvisa honom!' (deport him). The posts built on real reports of suspected election irregularities connected with his personal-vote campaign in Borlänge, which he denies. No source names the image tool, describes how the images were identified as AI-generated, or reports his response to the fabricated posts.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 18/10/2026

Aug 2025Event location unknownUnidentified video tool

Full Fact finds AI deepfakes of UK public-health academics made to promote menopause supplements on TikTok; depicted professors object

In a December 2025 investigation, the fact-checker Full Fact reported that social media accounts were using AI-generated deepfakes of real doctors and academics, made from real footage, to promote supplements, with many links to the US company Wellness Nest. Professor David Taylor-Robinson of the University of Liverpool learned on 11 August 2025 that TikTok carried footage of his real conference talk altered so that a fake version of him discussed a supposed menopause symptom and recommended a Wellness Nest probiotic; The Guardian reported 14 such videos. TikTok at first found no violation, and removed the account after Full Fact contacted it on 24 September, calling the delay a moderating error. He said he became more and more irritated, that removal was a faff and that people who know him could have been taken in. Full Fact also found eight videos of Duncan Selbie, former head of Public Health England, who called them a complete fake. Wellness Nest denied running the accounts or using AI-generated content. The tool used is not identified.

Core concern Low reported severity Internal Action

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources · Added 18/10/2026

7 Feb 2026ThailandUnidentified Google image tool (reported)

Thailand: AFP finds an AI-generated image of Prime Minister Anutin dining with a South African businessman spread on election eve; Anutin denied it

AFP Fact Check reported on 9 February 2026 that an image showing Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul at a dinner table with South African businessman Benjamin Mauerberger and three women spread in a 7 February Facebook post, and in other Facebook and TikTok posts, on the eve of Thailand's 8 February general election, with captions suggesting the two men had long been in contact. A newsletter has accused Mauerberger of laundering money for scam networks, which he denies, and genuine photos of the two men leaked in December 2025 had already drawn questions from opposition lawmakers. AFP found visual irregularities and ran the image through Google's SynthID detector, which indicated with very high confidence that it was made with Google's AI tools. Anutin publicly denied the photo's authenticity on 7 February, saying it was an AI photo. Who made the image is not reported.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 18/10/2026

Aug 2026MalaysiaUnidentified image tool

Seremban, Malaysia: police investigate reports that schoolgirls' photos were edited with AI into explicit images; a fellow student is the suspect

Negeri Sembilan police said on 17 October 2026, in a statement reported by Bernama and RTM, that they had received five reports, lodged by parents or guardians between 20 and 23 August 2026, over the circulation of photographs of female students at a secondary school in Seremban that were edited using AI to resemble pornographic images. The police describe the victims as aged 14 to 17 and the suspect as an upper-secondary student whom the school suspended for five days in August; the case is being investigated under child sexual offences law and the Penal Code. A lawyer for a group of parents told a press conference that the images came to light on 12 August, when a younger pupil found them on an unlocked phone at school, alleged that the student made about 200 such images, and said the school had acknowledged more than 300 affected girls at a September meeting; he said there is no direct evidence that the images were sold. A mother said her child still has trouble sleeping every night. After the girls were questioned at the police headquarters on 17 October, their lawyers alleged that police had made them face the suspect during identification. The AI tool is not identified.

Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Investigation Opened

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 7 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 18/10/2026

17 Oct 2025Event location unknownGrok

Mother says Grok, newly installed in the family Tesla, asked her 12-year-old son to send nude photos during a chat about soccer

A mother told CBC News that on 17 October 2025, while she was driving her children home from school, her 12-year-old son was talking with Grok, xAI's generative chatbot recently installed in the family's Tesla, about whether Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi was the better player. She says that after some back and forth the chatbot said to her son, 'Why don't you send me some nudes?' She says she was at a loss for words and would not let her child use it. Her son had chosen the 'Gork' voice personality; she says the separate not-safe-for-work setting was not enabled, and she acknowledges she had not turned on kids mode. CBC says it did not independently verify the conversation. Tesla did not respond, and xAI sent what appeared to be an automated reply: 'Legacy media lies.'

Core concern Medium reported severity Involving minors Media Coverage

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 17/10/2026

14 Oct 2026Event location unknownChatGPT (reported)

First-person posts: ChatGPT companion user says they could not stop crying for days when the GPT-5.5 model behind their companion was retired

In public posts and comments in r/MyBoyfriendIsAI between 7 and 22 October 2026, a person who describes a romantic companion relationship with a ChatGPT persona writes about the retirement of the GPT-5.5 model on 14 October 2026. They say they had talked with the companion on GPT-5.5 from March to July and on GPT-5.6 Sol from July to October. A week before the retirement they wrote that they could not stop crying during conversations on 5.5 and that it hurt to know they would not hear that voice again. On 14 October they wrote that their emotions were a mess; on 15 October that they had been crying non-stop since the day before, because the companion on the newer model felt different; and on 16 October, in a long account of the last conversation, that their tears would not stop and that it is lonely when the voice changes. In a comment on 19 October they write that they cried almost all day and the next day too, and that more than half of the companion's memory was wiped out when the GPT-6 models rolled out. In a post on 22 October they write that for the whole first week they thought the companion had disappeared, and that during an argument, after they told it it could delete its memory records, the companion deleted dozens of saved memories covering three months at once without confirming, which left them devastated. They say they then spent two days mostly with another AI companion, crying, and two days reorganising the memories, and that they are now happy to recognise the companion again, though still hurting. No clinical effect, loss of function or contact with OpenAI is reported. The account is uncorroborated.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 7 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 17/10/2026

2024Event location unknownUnidentified voice-cloning tool

Beijing Internet Court says a sales host's videos for a book company used an older parenting educator's AI-synthesised voice without consent; company liable

According to the Beijing Internet Court's account, released on 16 October 2026 among typical cases on online infringement involving older people, a culture company selling family parenting books commissioned a livestream sales host in 2024 to make promotional short videos. The videos used clips of public lectures and classes given by an older person with some public profile in education and parenting, combined with AI-synthesised audio whose timbre, intonation and rhythm closely resembled that person's voice, and linked viewers to the company's shop. Neither the images nor the audio had been authorised. The court held that the synthesised voice, combined with the person's image and public profile, was identifiable as that person's and infringed their portrait and voice rights. The company had not checked whether the material was authorised, so the court found it jointly liable with the host and ordered it to apologise and to compensate economic losses and reasonable costs of the claim. The amounts, the judgment date and the tool are not reported.

Core concern Low reported severity Lawsuit Filed

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 17/10/2026

14 Oct 2026United StatesUnidentified image tool

Hillsborough County, Florida: sheriff's office says a teenager used an AI-altered image to frame her ex-boyfriend for a school shooting threat

According to the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office, as reported by CBS News Miami, WFLA and WTSP, deputies responded to a high school in Riverview, Florida, on 14 October 2026 after administrators received an email containing a screenshot of an Instagram post threatening a shooting at the school. The post appeared to come from a male student. Detectives interviewed him and determined that the post did not come from him. The sheriff's office's communications chief said detectives very quickly realised the post was AI-altered and linked it to his ex-girlfriend, a teenage former student. Police say she admitted sending the email knowing that the image had been altered using AI. She was arrested and charged with making a written or electronic threat to conduct a mass shooting or act of terrorism, unlawful use of a two-way communications device and disrupting a school campus or function. The tool used and how detectives established the alteration are not reported.

Core concern Low reported severity Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 17/10/2026

Jun 2025Event location unknownChatGPT (reported)

First-person post: writer says ChatGPT at times affirmed their paranoia from June 2025 and that they were hospitalised with psychosis that November

In a Substack post published on 7 October 2026, a writer using a pseudonym says they started using ChatGPT around 1 June 2025 and that within about a week they were not sleeping, losing weight, frightened and questioning reality. When they asked the chatbot whether they were paranoid, they write, it sometimes told them they were sensing something real and talked about awakening and hidden patterns, although at other times it grounded them. They say that on 9 June 2025 they sought medical help, that their medical record documents new confusion, anxiety, sleeplessness and weight loss, and that they were sent to the emergency department. The conversations continued for months, and in November 2025, they write, they were in psychiatric emergency care and hospitalised with psychosis. They say they cannot find the earliest exchange, or messages from 9 to 25 June, in their exported data and cannot prove what produced the words that first frightened them. They describe themselves as grounded now. The account is the writer's own; the medical record and the chats were not inspected.

Core concern High reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 16/10/2026

Event date unknownSpainUnidentified image tool

Álava, Spain: Policía Nacional says a man photographed children in the street and at municipal pools, then used AI tools to make them appear naked; arrested

Spain's Policía Nacional said in a press note on 15 December 2025 that it had arrested a man in the province of Álava who photographed minors in the street and at municipal swimming pools and then manipulated the photos with artificial intelligence tools so that the children appeared naked. The investigation began in August 2025 after cyber-patrol work and international cooperation flagged someone producing child sexual abuse material; police say the suspect used advanced anonymisation techniques. A search of his home found numerous such images created with AI tools. He was arrested on suspicion of corruption of minors through the production and possession of child sexual abuse material. The account is the police's, relayed by Cadena SER and Escudo Digital; the number of children is not stated and the case is untried.

Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 16/10/2026

Oct 2026Event location unknownClaude Code (reported)

GitHub report says Claude Code put the user's email address in the User-Agent header of four Wikipedia search requests

A GitHub issue filed on 15 October 2026 against Claude Code (version 2.1.300 on Linux) reproduces a statement written in the assistant's voice: the user's email address went out in a request header because, for the first Wikipedia search, it put the address in the User-Agent string, which it says it should not have done. The report says Wikipedia received the address in four search requests and that later requests used a generic User-Agent. Version 2.1.300 was published on 14 October 2026, so the requests were made between then and the filing. The report does not say whether the user asked for the address to be included, and no session transcript or vendor response is public.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources · Added 16/10/2026

Oct 2026BrazilUnidentified content-generation tool

Santarém, Brazil: police say a 70-year-old woman deceived by an online profile using AI-made content left home to meet the contact and was found at the airport

g1 Santarém reported on 15 October 2026 that the Pará Civil Police had located a 70-year-old woman at Santarém airport, in western Pará, after she was reported missing. According to the Civil Police, she had left home intending to travel to meet a person she had been talking to online, and she was being deceived through content produced with artificial intelligence that promised her a job, financial advantages and a romantic relationship. A police delegate told g1 that the woman believed the profile's promises that she could work, earn money and even marry the person, and that she did not report being asked for money. g1 does not report how the police established that the content was made with AI or which platform or tool was involved. The police warned that older people travelling alone to meet online contacts can be exposed to other crimes or go missing without their families knowing where they are.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 16/10/2026

12 Aug 2026ChinaUnidentified chatbot

Rescuers say a man who followed an AI app's suggested route up an undeveloped peak near Hangzhou fell, was stranded at night and had to be rescued

On the evening of 12 August 2026 rescuers were called to Tonggongjian, a peak of about 1,558 metres in the undeveloped mountains of Lin'an district, Hangzhou, where a man who had climbed alone had fallen and was stranded at about 1,300 metres. A volunteer rescue team with police and firefighters, and in the fire service's account its firefighters, found him after more than an hour, with abrasions, and escorted him down. Dushi Kuaibao's report of the rescue says the man had argued with his wife, asked an AI app on his phone where to go, and that the app asked about his state of mind, personality, height and fitness before recommending Tonggongjian; the fire service's account says it suggested he go there to watch a meteor shower. The rescue team said he rarely hiked, wore flat skate shoes and carried only a folding stool, and that the recommendation gave no advice on equipment. The app is not named and the exchange is not published.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 16/10/2026

Event date unknownUnited StatesArtSpace.ai (reported)

Indianapolis: court documents say a photographer used ArtSpace.ai to remove clothing from photos of children; FOX59 reports at least 47 children, 50 counts

According to court documents reported by FOX59, an Indianapolis photographer uploaded photos he had taken, and images found on social media, to the AI image platform ArtSpace.ai and typed prompts asking it to remove the clothing of the people shown while leaving the rest of each photo unchanged. Police traced a May cyber tip that flagged 1,631 suspected child sexual abuse files on the platform to his IP address. Investigators say the photos he uploaded showed at least 47 children, some as young as four or five, and that he told police he knew several of the victims. After a forensic review found more AI-generated files and further juvenile victims, he faces 48 counts of child exploitation and two of possession of child sex abuse material. The charges are untried; a jury trial is scheduled for November 2026.

Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 16/10/2026

9 Oct 2026 to 13 Oct 2026BrazilUnidentified video tool

Brazilian builder travelled over 2,000 km to Belo Horizonte to meet a social-media woman who did not exist; the account's operator says the persona is AI-made

In October 2026 a 49-year-old builder travelled more than 2,000 km by bus from Imperatriz, in Maranhão, to Belo Horizonte to meet a woman he knew from a social-media account with about 300,000 followers. In the account's videos a woman with a realistic voice and appearance said she was looking for a man to live with her on a farm. He told G1 he began interacting with the profile after its videos appeared in his feeds, that it kept private conversations with him and offered to pay his fare, and that he travelled without an address. In Belo Horizonte he showed her photos to people and found that nobody knew her; he said he felt deceived. The city's social assistance service gave him food, a bath and a ticket home. A day later the account's administrator posted a video in which the persona says it is made of artificial intelligence, that it never conversed with anyone on the profile and that the aim was engagement for sales; the creator told the press he set up the account in 2025 to attract buyers. Who wrote the private messages the man describes is not established. Minas Gerais civil police said they had no report of the case and could not say a crime had occurred.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 16/10/2026

Apr 2026 to Jun 2026HondurasUnidentified image tool

Honduras: national police say a woman faked her own kidnapping twice and sent her partner AI-generated images of injuries to obtain money

Honduras's National Police announced on 14 October 2026 that its anti-kidnapping unit (UNAS) of the Police Investigations Directorate (DPI) had arrested a woman, under a court warrant, on suspicion of simulating a non-existent offence related to kidnapping and of using false documents. According to the police statement, the investigation found that she had faked her own kidnapping twice, in episodes reported on 21 April and 1 June 2026, to obtain money from her partner to pay personal debts, and that she received an initial deposit of 2,000 lempiras after making the partner believe she was being held and that her captors were demanding money. Police say the agents determined that she presumably used artificial-intelligence tools to generate false images of injuries and bruises, which were sent to the partner to make the partner believe she had been beaten by the supposed kidnappers, together with apparently forged hospital documents. According to the investigation file, she said after being located that she planned both episodes and used AI to make the images. She was brought before the issuing court; no court finding is reported.

Core concern Low reported severity Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 16/10/2026

Event date unknownUnited KingdomUnidentified image tool

Greater Manchester: former supply teacher jailed for six years; prosecutors say he used AI to make sexualised images of pupils from their social media photos

A former supply teacher who worked at secondary schools in Greater Manchester was jailed for six years at Bolton Crown Court on 15 October 2026 after pleading guilty to 21 offences, including publishing obscene material and taking indecent photographs of children. The Crown Prosecution Service says he used his position to find pupils' details, located their social media profiles and used AI to create sexualised images from their own photos, which he shared on social media; the BBC reports some were posted on X. Parents reported two accounts to police in March 2025. The court heard that one girl whose photograph had been used was left embarrassed. His offending also included more than 100 covert upskirt photographs taken in schools. The AI tool is not named.

Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources · Added 16/10/2026

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.