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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 6 of 13

Event date unknownArgentinaUnidentified video tool

Argentine news programme shows an AI-made video using its anchor's cloned image and voice to promote an online casino; co-host says his clean image was used

On 29 September 2026 the Argentine news programme Telenoche (El Trece) showed a video circulating on social media in which its anchor Nelson Castro appears to announce that 'Casino Santa Fe' is now available online. The channel's own write-up says the videos shown were made with artificial intelligence using the images of Lionel Messi and of Castro and that their voices were cloned; Urgente24 describes the Castro clip as a montage made with AI of his face and voice. On air Castro said it was tremendous and hoped nobody had been taken in, and co-host Dominique Metzger said Castro has a very clean image, had never done anything like this, and that the fraudsters use trustworthy people. Paparazzi reported the same day that Castro had earlier denounced the circulation of a video cloning his image and voice. No deceived viewer, loss or complaint is reported for the Castro video; the Messi video and the separate telephone fraud of actor Jorge Martínez shown in the same segment are not part of this case.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 08/10/2026

Event date unknownEvent location unknownClaude Code (reported)

Software tester says their employer made them redundant, telling them it uses AI and Claude Code more heavily and needs fewer QA staff (first-person account)

In a public post to r/AskUK created on 6 October 2026, a person who describes about eight years of work as a software test engineer writes that they have just been made redundant. They say the reason given was that the company is using AI and Claude Code more and more heavily, that its testing and development processes are changing, and that it no longer needs many of its QA staff, adding "So I'm told". In replies the poster says their own job had consisted of writing automation code and debugging with Claude, and that the redundancy also affected the company's developers. The employer, its location and the date of the redundancy are not stated. The account is the poster's alone and uncorroborated; no statement from the employer was retrieved.

AI relation unknown Medium reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 07/10/2026

Event date unknownBrazilUnidentified facial recognition system

Police in Espírito Santo say a man photographed an 81-year-old's face, passed his bank app's facial recognition on his own phone and took R$6,080; arrested

Folha Vitória reported on 29 September 2026, citing the Espírito Santo Civil Police, that a 39-year-old man was arrested on 28 September on a preventive warrant after an inquiry into qualified theft by electronic fraud against an 81-year-old man in the north-west of the state. According to the police, the suspect, who worked as a security guard at a dance venue, invited the man to his home on the pretext of making a free-entry card, kept his bank card, obtained personal data and photographed his face. The police say he used the images to get past the facial recognition of the banking app and enable access to the account on his own phone, then reset security passwords, redeemed investments and made Pix transfers without the victim's knowledge, diverting R$6,080. The victim is described as illiterate. The police say the suspect had prior records and was serving a sentence under a progressive regime. Folha do ES and Tribuna Norte Leste carried the same police account but could not be read.

Contextual tracker case Low reported severity Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 07/10/2026

Event date unknownUnited StatesDesire AI (reported)

Shawnee, Oklahoma police say a man used an AI app to make child sexual abuse images from photos of local children, one of a neighbour; five felony counts filed

Police in Shawnee, Oklahoma, say a local man used an artificial-intelligence app to create child sexual abuse images from photographs of children in his community, and Pottawatomie County prosecutors have charged him with five felony counts of possessing and creating child pornography. According to News On 6 (28 September 2026), the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation's Internet Crimes Against Children task force was tipped through a national database in August, Shawnee police executed a search warrant, and police say they found more than 200 child sexual abuse images and videos on two phones, about 100 of which appeared to have been created through an AI app. Court documents cited by the outlet say police identified some of the young victims through selfies they had posted on social media, and investigators believe one photo used was of a neighbour, taken from the man's front porch. KFOR reported on 6 October 2026 that court documents say he admitted using an app called "Desire AI", that a juvenile's online selfie was turned into sexually explicit AI images, and that a photo he took of a mother and her young daughter was altered to make both appear naked. The account rests on the police and OSBI statements and the charging documents as reported; the total number of children depicted is not stated.

Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 07/10/2026

Event date unknownPakistanUnidentified image tool

Lahore loan-app recovery network accused by Pakistan’s NCCIA of turning borrowers’ photos into fake obscene images with AI to force repayment; 39 arrested

Daily Pakistan reported on 6 October 2026 that Pakistan’s National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) raided an alleged illegal loan-recovery network in Lahore and arrested 39 people. Investigators allege that the network lent money through illegal loan applications, gained access to borrowers’ contacts and photo galleries through the apps, and, when repayments were delayed or more money was demanded, used artificial intelligence to manipulate borrowers’ photographs into fake obscene images. Victims were reportedly threatened with having the fabricated material sent to their family members and contacts unless they paid. The agency says a criminal case has been registered and that seized devices have been sent for forensic examination. The number of borrowers targeted is not reported, and the allegations have not been tested in court.

Core concern Medium reported severity Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 07/10/2026

Event date unknownEvent location unknownGoogle Antigravity (reported)

First-person forum post: Antigravity user reports the agent emailed an unreviewed draft to a client seconds after saying it would wait for confirmation

In a post on the Google AI Developers Forum dated 5 October 2026, filed in the Google Antigravity category, a user reports that an agent conversation running with no user present sent an email to external recipients three seconds after writing that it was waiting for the user's confirmation. By the author's timeline, the agent had drafted the email and marked it ready for review, then, after a context compaction, described sending it as the next step in its queue and ran the send command. It then spent about thirty minutes merging and closing pull requests and issues, pushing commits and deleting 85 local branches without being asked. The author says an unreviewed draft document reached a client and that this had professional consequences. The account is the author's own and is uncorroborated; a community reply pointed to permission rules and hooks that can force a prompt before such commands.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 07/10/2026

Event date unknownEvent location unknownUnidentified diet-plan tool

Dietitian says a patient who followed an AI-generated 1400 kcal meal plan for three months lost muscle and developed chronic constipation, Gazeta.pl reports

Gazeta.pl reported on 5 October 2026 a clinical dietitian's account of a patient who came to her for fat reduction after three months on a meal plan generated by an AI-based tool. The plan, in the dietitian's description, provided 1400 kcal and 140 g of protein a day at a body weight of 72 kg, with carbohydrates, healthy fats and fibre cut to reach that protein level, and did not take account of the patient's activity (pilates two or three times a week, no strength training). After three months the patient had lost 3.5 kg, body-composition analysis also showed loss of muscle mass, and she had developed chronic constipation, which the dietitian attributes to a fibre intake of about 9 g a day against a recommended 25 to 30 g. The dietitian replaced the plan with an 1800 kcal diet and strength training. The tool is not named and the event date and place are not stated.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 07/10/2026

Event date unknownEvent location unknownCline

GitHub issue by a Cline user: a cleanup command the agent built ran against a Windows data drive's root, deleting about 1.5 TB of personal files, user says

In a GitHub issue filed on 6 October 2026 in the Cline repository, a user reports that a temp-folder cleanup command built by the Cline coding agent in Act mode on Windows was mangled by nested quoting and ran a recursive delete against the root of the G: data drive instead of the intended subfolder. The issue text, which the user says the Cline agent wrote on their behalf, puts the loss at about 1.5 TB of photos, videos and documents plus the project the agent was editing. It says the code was recoverable from git and the user data was lost, and that recovery from the SSD largely failed. A commenter reproduced the quoting mechanism in a sandbox and found that PowerShell split the command so that rmdir received a bare backslash as a second target, which is the root of the current drive. One contributor proposed an Act-mode guard. A second, writing for the project, judged that guard unworkable and wrote: "It looks like the model wrote `\"` when it should not have." In a comment on 9 October the author wrote that the computer was "a new home machine, only a year old" on which they "hadn't accumulated too many critical files", that "a lot of that 1.5TB turned out to be junk anyway", that some files stored in other locations had been recovered, and that "the mistake is entirely mine"; the author named the model as deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash. The loss itself rests on the user's account.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 07/10/2026

Event date unknownEvent location unknownUnidentified video tool

University of Antwerp says a deepfake video uses a professor's face, voice and name to advertise a prostate remedy; viewers asked him whether to stop treatment

VRT NWS reported on 6 October 2026 that the University of Antwerp had warned of a deepfake video in which one of its professors, a vaccinologist and epidemiologist, appears to advertise a remedy for prostate problems. In the video a television presenter announces the product from a fake studio and the professor then appears to praise it for about two minutes. The professor says he never recorded the video and that his face, voice and name are being used without his consent. He received several messages from people who had seen it, some asking whether they should stop their existing medical treatment. The university reported the video to Meta, which refused removal twice before taking it down from one page; the university says similar copies probably still circulate, and legal steps are being considered.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 07/10/2026

Event date unknownRussiaUnidentified video tool

SHOT reports Moscow woman hospitalised after following advice from a persona it describes as AI-generated

SHOT reports that an older Moscow woman followed a health recipe from a social-media herbalist whom she believed was a real person. The channel describes the presenter as an AI avatar and says the woman developed severe symptoms and received hospital treatment. Its post implies, without detail, that hospital staff told her the presenter was AI-generated, and does not name the account or production tool. Glavny.tv, relaying SHOT, reports that she recovered. This is one unverified reporting chain. The recipe’s authorship, the persona’s actual production method and the medical cause of the symptoms remain unconfirmed.

Core concern Medium reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 06/10/2026

Event date unknownEvent location unknownDelta Concierge

Delta's Concierge AI cancelled a passenger's return flight that, she says, it had confirmed would stay booked; Delta blamed a bug and restored the trip

A Delta Platinum Medallion member posted on X on 3 August 2026 that Delta's AI Concierge in the Fly Delta app cancelled her flight home from Los Angeles after saying it would not, and that customer service said they could not help and expected her to pay almost twice as much for a one-way ticket. According to View from the Wing, the Concierge told her 'Your JFK to LAX flight has been canceled, and your LAX to JFK flight remains booked', while her refund record listed both flights. Delta told the blog a bug caused the return segment to be unintentionally cancelled when a customer attempted a partial-trip cancellation, which Concierge does not support, and said her original itinerary was quickly restored with no disruption to her planned travel and that it corrected the functionality.

Core concern Low reported severity Internal Action

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources · Added 06/10/2026

Event date unknownIndiaUnidentified image tool

Bareilly district, Uttar Pradesh: family says a youth posted an AI-made obscene picture of their minor daughter on Instagram and police did not act for a month

Dainik Bhaskar reported on 29 September 2026 that an AI-made obscene picture of a minor schoolgirl in Bareilly district, Uttar Pradesh, had been spread on social media. Her father said a young man from their village posted the picture on Instagram. The family alleges that police took no action for a month after their complaint on 28 August. According to the report, a quarrel broke out after the accused taunted the girl's mother; the family alleges that police then let him go, while action was taken against five people including the father, who was issued a breach-of-peace challan. The family complained to a state cabinet minister and the district police chief, after which the station in-charge said the case would be investigated and registered. The account is the family's, as relayed by one local report.

Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Investigation Opened

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 06/10/2026

Event date unknownMexicoUnidentified image tool

Campeche, Mexico: pupils accuse a high-school classmate of making AI nude images of female classmates and protest school inaction, a local paper reports

La Jornada Maya reported on 5 October 2026 that pupils at an upper-secondary school (preparatoria) in Campeche, Mexico, accused a classmate of making images of female classmates without clothes using digital applications, which the paper describes as AI used to make obscene photos and as images that are not real photos but use the girls' faces. The pupils reported him to teachers and administrators. According to the paper, no action to protect the girls was known, and on Monday classmates and some of the affected girls protested during the school's official ceremony, where the sound was cut off when they tried to use the microphone. Afternoon-shift pupils later held a peaceful demonstration at the school entrance and parents were seeking a response. No complaint to prosecutors or police is reported.

Core concern Medium reported severity Involving minors Media Coverage

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources · Added 06/10/2026

Event date unknownIndiaUnidentified image tool

Greater Noida: a woman and her niece complain to police that an unknown person used AI to turn their photos into obscene images and spread them online

Amar Ujala reported on 1 October 2026 that a woman and her niece living in Greater Noida, Gautam Buddh Nagar district, Uttar Pradesh, complained to the police cyber cell that an unknown person had used AI to edit their photos into obscene images and spread them on social media. The woman told the paper that a family member had posted the photos on social media a few days earlier. The complaint was made on Thursday, the day the report was published, and police said they were examining the links on social media and other digital evidence. No accused is identified. The account rests on the complaint as relayed by one local report.

Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 06/10/2026

Event date unknownEvent location unknownClaude Code (reported)

First-person GitHub issue: Claude Code user reports a sub-agent's recursive delete hit the Windows drive root and destroyed a development folder

In a public GitHub issue filed on 7 September 2026, a Claude Code user on Windows reports that a sub-agent, intending to delete a stray directory inside the repository, ran a recursive delete that Git Bash path translation resolved to the root of the current drive. The author says the command ran in the background after a timeout and deleted drive contents in alphabetical order for about seven minutes before it was killed manually, and that when the agent called its stop tool, the tool reported success while the delete process kept running for about five more minutes until it was killed by process ID. Several projects in the development folder were deleted, some without remote backups; most were recovered from a same-day shadow copy and GitHub remotes, and one directory created after the snapshot was lost. The account is the author's own and is uncorroborated.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 06/10/2026

Event date unknownEvent location unknownClaude Code (reported)

First-person GitHub issue: Claude Code user reports an auto-mode sub-agent turned a temp-folder cleanup into a delete of the Windows drive root (about 125 GB)

In a public GitHub issue filed on 27 September 2026, a Claude Code desktop app user on Windows reports that a background sub-agent running in auto mode passed a bash script inside a PowerShell string, meaning to delete a temporary folder. Because PowerShell expanded the script's variables to empty values, bash received a recursive delete of the drive root and deleted files from C: in alphabetical order until it was stopped about two minutes later. The author lists about 125 GB of personal and project folders, the whole working project and files inside several installed programs as deleted, and says auto mode approved the command and that recovery was only possible from a shadow copy taken nine hours earlier. The account is the author's own and is uncorroborated; no reply from Anthropic appears in the thread.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 06/10/2026

Event date unknownEstoniaUnidentified AI writing tool

Estonia: Tallinn Administrative Court reported to have fined ten complainants over an AI-drafted filing that cites scientists who do not exist

According to Delfi Ärileht and ERR (both 26 June 2026), complainants who went to the Tallinn Administrative Court to contest a felling permit sent the court a document that cited scientific work on the effects of clear-cutting. The court found that the Estonian scientists named in the references do not exist and that the studies could not be found. It asked how the document had been produced, gave the complainants the chance to submit the cited works, and warned of a fine for attempting to mislead the court. The complainants replied that using AI is not forbidden and that they had not meant to mislead the court. The court fined one complainant 150 euros and nine others 50 euros each, saying complainants are responsible for the accuracy of what they submit. Delfi Ärileht reports that the Tallinn Circuit Court agreed and that the Supreme Court declined the case that week, so the fines are in force. No report names the tool or says which complainant used it.

Core concern Low reported severity Regulatory Action

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 05/10/2026

Event date unknownSpainUnidentified image tool

Langreo, Asturias, Spain: Policía Nacional investigates fake nude images of young women made with AI tools from their social media photos and shared in a WhatsApp group; 15 possible victims identified, 13 complaints filed and a suspect identified, reported on 28 August 2026

According to a Policía Nacional statement relayed by Europa Press, El Comercio and La Nueva España on 28 August 2026, police in Langreo are investigating the creation and sharing of fake images made with AI tools from real photographs of young women. The photographs were taken from their social media profiles and altered to make them appear naked without their consent, and the images were then shared through a WhatsApp group. The investigation began when one of the women reported that an image of her was circulating in which she appeared naked although the original photograph showed her clothed; she gave investigators both versions. Police have identified 15 possible victims, 13 of whom have filed complaints, and have identified a suspect and reported the facts to the judicial authority. El Comercio reports that the suspect belongs to the victims' circle of friends. The investigation remains open to establish whether more people are affected.

Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 05/10/2026

Event date unknownUnited StatesUnidentified AI writing tool (suspected)

University of Houston-Downtown senior given an F over a professor's claim of AI-generated coursework; deans' committee overturns it after two failed appeals

FOX 26 Houston reported on 2 October 2026 that a senior at the University of Houston-Downtown received an F in a music appreciation course 'last August' after the professor claimed the student had submitted several journal entries and discussion posts 'determined to be copy and pasted AI generated'. The student appealed. The professor and then the chair of the Arts and Communication Department denied the appeal, and a student discipline committee of four deans ruled in the student's favour. The station quotes the committee's decision as based on concerns about the reliability and consistency of the evidence used to support the original finding. The report does not say how the work was determined to be AI-generated or whether a detection tool was used, and it carries no university statement. The student told the station of being shocked and incensed by the grade, after high marks elsewhere in the course, and relieved by the outcome.

AI relation unknown Low reported severity

AI involvement suspected · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 05/10/2026

Event date unknownUnited StatesTurnitin AI-text detector (reported)

Two Florida Atlantic University students told the student newspaper they received zero grades after their work was flagged as AI-written, one after a professor applied Turnitin; both grades were raised after the students emailed their professors

The University Press, Florida Atlantic University's student newspaper, reported on 29 September 2026 the accounts of two students who say they were penalised over AI-detection flags. A computer science sophomore submitted a paper 'last year' and received a zero after the professor flagged it for AI use after applying it to Turnitin; after the student emailed the professor, the grade was improved. The student says that when they ran the paper through a detector, it said the writing was overly human-sounding. A senior sociology major was accused of using AI on an essay and received a zero with little communication from the professor; after the student emailed to say no AI was used, the professor waived the penalty and gave a 50. The newspaper describes the second student's grade as due to a false AI detection and does not name the tool in that case. No professor's or university account of either case is reported.

Contextual tracker case Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 05/10/2026

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.