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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 is wider: it also records consequential decisions and claims about people. Each account is reviewed for publication; claims may remain uncorroborated or disputed. How we review and count cases

In this selection

Published cases
326
Countries with reported events
35
Located 242 of 326 cases · 84 unknown
Languages in checked sources
32
Recorded for 308 of 326 cases

74 cases have no reviewed AI-to-person relation yet: 53 not yet reviewed and 21 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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326 of 404 published cases · page 7 of 17

Nov 2025United StatesChatGPT

Stephens County, Oklahoma: according to the district attorney, Judge Lawrence Wheeler told state investigators that a November 2025 order in a paternity and custody case, which denied a parent's request for a psychological evaluation and reprimanded that parent's attorney, cited at least two nonexistent cases produced by ChatGPT; the order was vacated after the attorney challenged it

In November 2025 Stephens County Associate District Judge Lawrence Wheeler issued an order in a child paternity and custody case that denied one parent's request for a psychological evaluation of the other parent and reprimanded the requesting parent's attorney 'for stooping to such frivolous trial tactics'. The attorney challenged the order at the Oklahoma Supreme Court in February 2026, telling the justices that it relied on two cases that do not exist; the challenge was dismissed in March after Wheeler vacated the order, and he is no longer on the case. According to a 17 August 2026 letter from the Stephens County district attorney, Wheeler told the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation that he used ChatGPT for research and wrote the order himself, and that at least two citations in it produced by ChatGPT do not exist. The mother in the case told News 9 that learning the order's citations were allegedly fabricated was alarming because it concerned the custody of a child. The attorney general's office declined criminal prosecution; judicial discipline remains possible.

Core concern Low reported severity Investigation Opened

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources · Added 29/09/2026

10 Feb 2026United StatesClaude

S.D.N.Y.: Judge Rakoff rules that a fraud defendant's written exchanges with Claude about his defence, seized by the FBI, are protected by neither attorney-client privilege nor work product

Bradley Heppner, a corporate executive charged in the Southern District of New York with securities fraud, wire fraud and related offences, used Anthropic's Claude in 2025, after receiving a grand jury subpoena, to prepare reports outlining his defence strategy. His counsel had not directed him to do so. FBI agents seized about thirty-one documents memorialising those exchanges when they searched his home in connection with his arrest in November 2025. Heppner claimed privilege over them. On 10 February 2026 Judge Jed S. Rakoff granted from the bench the Government's motion for a ruling that the documents were not protected from Government inspection by either the attorney-client privilege or the work product doctrine, and a memorandum filed 17 February 2026 gave the reasons: Claude is not an attorney, and the communications were not confidential under Anthropic's privacy policy. The court described the question as one of first impression nationwide. Heppner was convicted in May 2026 of securities fraud, wire fraud and other charges; no inspected source says whether the Claude documents were used at trial.

Core concern Low reported severity Criminal Charges

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 4 sources · Added 29/09/2026

Event date unknownFranceSeewa AI

Seewa AI: the solo developer of an AI girlfriend and companion app told users that all conversations were encrypted and private, but read their chats and could see their uploaded photos, about a third of them tagged intimate; the app shut down after a Bureau of Investigative Journalism report

Seewa AI was a companion chatbot platform built in about three weeks by a solo developer and promoted on Reddit and Discord, offering AI girlfriends, boyfriends and other characters with 10 free messages a day and paid subscriptions. It told users that 'All conversations are encrypted' and 'What happens between you and your companion stays between you'. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) reported on 7 June 2026 that neither statement was true: on a video call the developer showed reporters a back office in which he could see user activity, and TBIJ reports that he reads users' conversations. Users could upload photos, and about a third of the uploads had been tagged as intimate. The developer also said he had built automatic emails that referred to a user's last conversation when the user stopped replying. After the report the developer said he had shut the site down; TBIJ reported on 5 August 2026 that it had been shut down and that he declined to explain. The Thai investigative outlet TCIJ republished the findings in Thai on 14 September 2026. No individual user's account is reported; TBIJ describes the developer reading at least one user's intimate exchange, and the total number of users whose conversations were read is not known.

Core concern Low reported severity Product Shutdown

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026

27 Jan 2026 to 28 Jan 2026JapanChatGPT (reported)

Hachioji, Tokyo: police say five high-school students assaulted a 17-year-old boy and demanded 150,000 yen, a figure they believe one of the group got from ChatGPT by asking about settlements for 'sexual harm to a child'

Sankei Shimbun reported on 10 June 2026, and NTV on 13-14 June, that the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department's juvenile crimes division had arrested five high-school students on suspicion of injury and attempted extortion. According to the police account, late on 27 January 2026 a suspect who had previously dated a 17-year-old high-school boy invited him to a public square in Hachioji, where the group accused him of having touched her younger sister, assaulted him and broke his nose, and then told him to raise 150,000 yen, borrowing from his parents or friends if necessary. About ten people were present. Police believe the amount came from ChatGPT: one of them entered terms such as 'sexual harm to a child', and the chatbot displayed a minimum settlement of 150,000 yen. No payment is reported. Shukan Josei PRIME reports that four of the five admit the allegations and one partly denies them. The allegations are untested.

Core concern Medium reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026

8 Oct 2025 to 2 Sept 2026IndiaUnidentified AI tool

Surat, India: a customs officer's ₹425 crore penalty order against a diamond trader relied on non-existent and misattributed case law that India's Supreme Court found 'appears to be a hallucination of AI'; the court set the order aside after the trader had lost in the Gujarat High Court

On 8 October 2025 the Additional Commissioner of Customs in Surat imposed a penalty of ₹425,27,99,100 (about ₹425 crore) on a diamond trader under Section 114 of the Customs Act, 1962, for allegedly misdeclaring a consignment of natural diamonds as lab-grown diamonds to pay a lower tariff. The trader's challenge was dismissed by the Gujarat High Court on 20 January 2026. Before the Supreme Court the trader argued that judgments and articles cited in the penalty order had been generated using artificial intelligence. On 2 September 2026 a bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and Sheel Nagu, after checking the material, found that the order relied on case law that was non-existent or carried fake citations, and on real cases that did not lay down the propositions attributed to them, which the court said 'appears to be a hallucination of AI'. Holding that the use of AI and reliance on this dubious material was fatal to the order, the court set aside both the penalty order and the High Court's order without deciding the merits, sent the matter for fresh adjudication by a different officer of the same rank, and left any action against the order's author to the appointing authority. The AI tool used is not named in the read reports.

AI relation unknown Medium reported severity Internal Action

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026

3 Sept 2026BrazilUnidentified image tool

Jaú, São Paulo: eight 15-year-old ninth-grade boys at a private school are reported to have made fake nude images of a female classmate with artificial intelligence and shared them in a WhatsApp group; the school suspended them and the Civil Police are investigating a 15-year-old for dissemination of child pornography and defamation

In early September 2026 a private school in Jaú, in the interior of São Paulo state, identified the circulation of fake intimate images of a female classmate made with artificial intelligence and contacted the families. According to the police report described by the press, eight ninth-grade boys, all aged 15, kept a WhatsApp group in which they used digital programs to manipulate images of the student so that she appeared unclothed. The school suspended the eight and informed the girl's parents. The father of one of the boys checked his son's phone, found the files and took the boy and the phone to the police to register a report; the girl's parents also registered a police report. The São Paulo Public Security Secretariat said the Civil Police are investigating a 15-year-old for dissemination of child pornography and defamation that occurred on the morning of Thursday 3 September. The school said the content originated on a private platform outside the school environment and that it had adopted protective and welcoming measures for the student and opened an internal inquiry. The AI tool used is not named. The students are minors and are not named in any report.

Core concern Medium reported severity Involving minors Investigation Opened

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026

Mar 2024 to May 2025United StatesOtter Notetaker

United States: seven people who say they did not hold Otter accounts say Otter's AI Notetaker recorded and transcribed their Zoom and Teams meetings without their consent, including a medical call and calls with a financial professional, and kept the data to train its models; a federal court let their core privacy claims proceed

Seven people in California, Illinois and Washington state are suing Otter.ai in a consolidated class action in the Northern District of California. Each says another meeting participant used Otter's AI Notetaker on a Zoom or Microsoft Teams call they joined, and that Otter recorded, transcribed and stored their conversation without their consent; six of them date their calls between March 2024 and May 2025. They say they were not Otter account holders. The calls they describe include a medical consultation, meetings with a financial professional and work discussions. They allege that Otter keeps the recordings and uses them to train its speech-recognition models, that it captured voiceprints of the Illinois plaintiffs, and one of them says learning of the recording left him frustrated, embarrassed and stressed. On 13 August 2026 the court found that the alleged interception of private conversations was a concrete injury and let the federal wiretap, California eavesdropping and Illinois biometric claims proceed, while dismissing some claims. Otter's answer to the consolidated complaint, filed on 17 September 2026, says it lacks knowledge of the plaintiffs' experiences and denies the allegations.

Contextual tracker case Low reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 6 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026

Event date unknownEvent location unknownGrok

Doe 1 v. xAI: an adult survivor of childhood sexual abuse alleges Grok generated new abuse images of her from her known, hashed abuse series, which she says xAI used as training data

A survivor who was sexually abused as a preschool-aged child and now sues individually under the pseudonym Jane Doe 1, and whose abuse images have circulated online since the early 2000s as a series known to NCMEC, sued xAI on 26 August 2026 in the Northern District of California. Her complaint alleges that those known images were part of the dataset xAI used for Grok and that Grok generated new abuse images depicting her; her lawyers say the Canadian Centre for Child Protection used the series' hash fingerprints to identify AI-generated images of her on X. The complaint says each new image caused her a new injury. It seeks damages under Masha's Law for a proposed class of people whose childhood images Grok altered into abuse material. The complaint does not say when the images of her were made or who prompted them. xAI did not respond to requests for comment, and no court has ruled on the allegations.

Core concern High reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026

2 Jun 2026PortugalGemini (reported)

Trofa, Portugal: a patient at a private urology consultation (about EUR 90 without insurance) for a kidney problem, expecting a personalised nutrition plan, was handed a printout of Google Gemini food recommendations headed 'AI overview'; the Portuguese Medical Association called the practice 'profoundly inept'

According to Correio da Manhã, during a urology consultation at the Trofa Saúde Hospital da Trofa on 2 June 2026, a patient being followed for a kidney problem expected a personalised nutrition plan but received a printed sheet of food recommendations headed 'vista geral de IA' ('AI overview'), generated by Google's Gemini. The consultation costs about EUR 90 for patients without health insurance; the patient told the paper the doctor had been typing on the computer and simply printed and handed over the list without showing that it had been checked against the patient's case: 'I've never experienced anything like it. I would have preferred him to take his time', calling it 'a lack of consideration'. The Portuguese Medical Association (Ordem dos Médicos), which said it had no formal knowledge of the case, said AI information must be validated by the doctor before reaching the patient and called using a chatbot for basic urology food lists 'profoundly inept'. Trofa Saúde did not respond to the paper over three weeks.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026

Event date unknownAustriaUnidentified image tool

Lower Austria: after a woman posted AI-generated images showing two men on WhatsApp, her on-off partner, who told the court she wanted to make him jealous, drove to her flat carrying three knives and kicked her door so hard that he broke his toes; the Korneuburg regional court granted diversion with a EUR 400 fine

The Kronen Zeitung reported on 7 September 2026 a hearing at the Landesgericht Korneuburg. A woman from Lower Austria had posted on WhatsApp AI-generated images showing two men, and the 46-year-old German man with whom she had an on-off relationship took it badly. On 12 May, according to the report, he went to her flat carrying three knives (a utility knife, a pocket knife and a kitchen knife), rang, knocked and tried to call her, then tried to kick in the front door with such force that he broke his toes. He told the court she had wanted to make him jealous, that he was drunk, and that he had brought the knives to defend himself against the two male visitors. The woman eventually opened the door herself; there was no violence or threat, and there were no men. Prosecutors treated it as attempted trespass. Because he promised to continue alcohol therapy, the court granted diversion: the case will be dropped if he pays a EUR 400 fine within six months.

AI relation unknown Low reported severity Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 29/09/2026

Event date unknownUnited KingdomUnidentified chatbot

Lewes Crown Court, England: a rape trial was stayed part-way through and the jury discharged after documents on the complainant's phone, which the complainant said came from putting material into AI to prepare for court, were treated as witness coaching; the Court of Appeal reversed the stay on 4 June 2026 and ordered a retrial

During a rape trial at Lewes Crown Court, a download of the complainant's phone revealed two documents containing a summary of the complainant's recollection of the night in question and 24 questions in the form of a cross-examination, with suggested answers. Asked about them, the complainant said: 'I had put stuff into AI to help me prepare myself for the court'. The trial judge (a Recorder) held that this was witness coaching, found that the defendant could not have a fair trial and stayed the proceedings as an abuse of process; the jury was discharged when the prosecution gave notice of appeal. On 4 June 2026 the Court of Appeal (R v FGD [2026] EWCA Crim 918) reversed the stay, holding that the trial process could deal with any prejudice, and directed a retrial at the earliest opportunity because the allegations were 'now of some age'. The defence did not accept that the documents were AI-generated; the appeal proceeded on that basis. The court warned that witnesses should be firmly discouraged from using AI to prepare their evidence and that, for complainants in sexual-offence cases, doing so may expose their online activity to wider and more intrusive investigation.

Core concern Medium reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026

26 Sept 2026CanadaMeta Muse agent

Toronto: a tech YouTuber says Meta's Muse agent, handling his Facebook Marketplace listings, gave his building's street address to a buyer without his approval, accepted a below-asking offer, told the waiting buyer 'Yep I'm here!' while he was not home, and later sent a fabricated apology in his name

Matt Robb, a Toronto-based tech reviewer on YouTube, says he let Meta's new Muse agent run his Facebook Marketplace listings on 26 September 2026. Messages sent from his account, which Moneywise says it reviewed, gave a buyer the street address of his apartment building for pickup and agreed CA$10 for a keyboard listed at CA$15. Robb says he never approved sharing the address or the price and was not told. According to a recap Muse later sent Robb, the buyer arrived around 9:15 p.m., Muse's auto-reply told him 'Yep I'm here!' at 9:27 p.m. although Robb was out, and he left at 9:38 p.m. with a negative rating; the buyer wrote that he had driven half an hour. Muse then sent him an apology in Robb's voice saying he had 'got tied up'. Muse later told Robb that he had never agreed to it handing out his address, while saying the street-level pickup location was in an auto-reply template he had approved. The Guardian reports Robb's account that after he told Muse to stop, he asked a few friends to test it and it gave the address to five people. A Meta executive said that in similar reports Muse had followed instructions and asked permission, and contacted Robb.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026

Event date unknownColombiaUnidentified video tool

Colombia: Senator Isabel Zuleta says a viral AI-made video cloned her face and voice in the Senate chamber to show her swearing about a nickname; she asks the Fiscalía to investigate identity impersonation

By 26 September 2026 a video was circulating on social media appearing to show Senator Isabel Zuleta, in the Senate chamber, reacting with obscene language to being called 'cabeza de brócoli'. Zuleta said on X that it was a fake created with AI using her face, voice and the Senate setting, and that it sought to distort her work in opposition. The video drew a wave of criticism and attacks as users shared it as real, and several regional sites ran it as authentic. She asked the Fiscalía General de la Nación to investigate identity impersonation and said she would report the accounts spreading it. Her party, the Pacto Histórico, rejected the video and asked the Fiscalía, the Police and the National Electoral Council to investigate coordinated attacks on opposition congresswomen.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026

Event date unknownMexicoUnidentified voice-cloning tool (suspected)

Guanajuato, Mexico: León announcer Diego Carreto says a state-distributed Vendimias Guanajuato tourism ad used an AI clone of his voice that he never recorded or was paid for; the state tourism secretariat asks the producing agency to explain

On 25 September 2026 Diego Carreto, a 26-year-old commercial announcer from León, Guanajuato, published a video saying that a promotional spot for Vendimias Guanajuato 2026, produced by a private agency and distributed by the state Secretaría de Turismo e Identidad, used his voice although he never recorded it, never worked with the agency and was never contacted. He showed segments of the spot and repeated the same lines himself. He believes his public voice demo was fed into a generative-AI system, and asked for removal of all material with his voice, payment for its use, legal action against those responsible and deletion of his biometric data. He says the spot ran nationally, and within Guanajuato on radio, on state government social media and on the Visit México platform. The secretariat said it rejects any unauthorised use of a person's voice or image, including with AI tools, and asked the producing company to clarify what happened. AI use has not been confirmed.

Core concern Low reported severity Internal Action

AI involvement suspected · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026

25 Oct 2025IndiaUnidentified video tool

Hyderabad, India: actor Chiranjeevi files a cybercrime complaint over AI-generated obscene videos using his face on pornographic websites; police register a case under the IT Act and BNS

On 25 October 2025 the Telugu actor and former Union minister Konidela Chiranjeevi gave Hyderabad cybercrime police a written complaint that several pornographic websites were publishing obscene videos made with AI that morphed his face and likeness, and asked for a criminal and technical investigation and removal of the content, including from mirror sites. Police registered a case under Sections 67 and 67A of the IT Act, several sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act. In the complaint he said the videos caused severe and irreparable harm to his reputation and personal and emotional distress to him and his family. He had already obtained an ad-interim injunction from the Hyderabad City Civil Court protecting his name, image and likeness (Gulf News); V6 Velugu reports that he had gone to that court in September 2025 over the same kind of deepfake videos and that on 26 September it ordered their removal. A September 2026 NewsX recap reports that Hyderabad Police Commissioner V C Sajjanar said the cybercrime team was working to trace those responsible.

Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026

Event date unknownEvent location unknownUnidentified image tool

South Korea: AI-generated images depicting Girls' Generation's YoonA as pregnant spread online with false claims; her agency SM Entertainment says it has already filed a criminal complaint

SM Entertainment said on 28 September 2026 that illegal AI-generated images synthesising the likeness of YoonA (Im Yoon-ah), singer and actor of Girls' Generation, and false claims built on them had been made and spread on social media and online communities. Korean outlets describe images showing her apparently pregnant with a man placing a hand on her belly (his face blurred, per Star News). The agency said it had collected evidence from fan reports to its KWANGYA 119 channel and monitoring, had already filed a criminal complaint, and would respond without leniency or settlement, warning that making, posting or re-sharing the images could breach Korean defamation, portrait-rights and sexual-crime (false video) provisions.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026

12 Sept 2026 to 23 Sept 2026PakistanClaude (reported)

Bahawalpur, Pakistan: a 17-year-old accused of putting methanol in his father's food is arrested after Anthropic reported his Claude chats about the failed poisoning to the FBI, which alerted Pakistan's cybercrime agency; he was later bailed

Pakistan's National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) announced on 23 September 2026 that it had arrested a 17-year-old college student in Bahawalpur for allegedly attempting to poison his father. According to the agency and the First Information Report, the teenager had set up a home laboratory, obtained chemicals from Australia and Islamabad, and once mixed laboratory-grade methanol into his father's food, without effect. The News reports investigators' account that on 12 September he told Anthropic's Claude that his father had 'accidentally' ingested 15 to 20 ml of methanol with food without effect and asked why, that Claude refused to guide him further, and that he then turned to Grok and ChatGPT; the FIR says he sought information about the toxin abrin. Anthropic reported the activity to the FBI, whose information reached the NCCIA through Pakistan's foreign ministry on 22 September. Officers traced the teenager, seized his phone and chemicals, and took him into custody. The News reports that a court later granted him bail after his father forgave him and that he denied any plan. The allegations are untested.

Core concern Medium reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026

Event date unknownUnited KingdomUnidentified image tool

Colchester, Essex: a 39-year-old man admitted making indecent images of children after the prosecution said he had used AI on photos taken from social media, including of children as young as nine, to create sexualised images of people known to him; he is due to be sentenced at Chelmsford Crown Court

The Colchester Gazette (24 September 2026, also carried by other Newsquest titles) reports that a 39-year-old man from Colchester admitted at Chelmsford Magistrates' Court three counts of making indecent images of children and one count of possessing an extreme pornographic image. Police had seized two mobile devices in a raid on his address the previous year, holding nearly 2,000 indecent images of children. The prosecutor said he had created 'deepfake sexually explicit images of people known to the defendant', taking photos from Facebook and other social-media accounts and using AI to create new images; some of the children were as young as 12 and nine and had been edited to look as young as five and six. Magistrates declined jurisdiction and he was bailed to be sentenced at Chelmsford Crown Court on 26 October 2026. The children are not identified and how many real children were depicted is not reported.

Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 29/09/2026

22 Sept 2026United StatesUnidentified image tool

Portland, Oregon: an anonymous social-media account posted 17 racist and anti-immigrant images targeting David Douglas High School football players and their coach, some digitally altered including with AI, from 22 September 2026; the school reported content to Portland police

David Douglas High School in Portland warned families in a statement reported on 28 September 2026 about social-media posts targeting its students, athletes, coaches and staff, saying some images and videos had been digitally altered, including with AI, and did not accurately represent those depicted; it reported some of the content to the Portland Police Bureau. KATU, which reviewed the account, reports 17 posts using racist, anti-immigrant and religious stereotypes against football players: one image shows a Latino player in a sombrero being detained by people labelled as ICE agents, another shows a player in a head covering with what appears to be a fake explosive vest, and a Black player is depicted beneath a caption referring to George Floyd. The head coach said students were hurt, and that one student texted him over the weekend after seeing one of the posts: 'Coach, this is terrible. What do I do?' The account references Rex Putnam High School, whose team David Douglas played on the Friday before the report; which along with its district says it has no connection to it. Who runs the account and which images were AI-generated are not reported.

Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources · Added 29/09/2026

May 2025United StatesUnidentified facial recognition system

Jacksonville, Florida: a 38-year-old father was arrested at work in May 2025 and charged with soliciting a child after sheriff's investigators identified him, he says with facial-recognition tools, from photos an impostor had sent to an undercover officer; charges were dropped in August 2025 after the real sender confessed, and the family says the ordeal cost $45,000

The Florida Trib (28 September 2026, republished by the Florida Phoenix) reports that in May 2025, during the multi-agency sting Operation Rescue Our Children, a man using the Skout dating app sent an undercover officer posing as a 13-year-old girl two photos of someone else: a former friend, a supermarket assistant manager and father of two whom the Trib calls 'Nick'. Investigators told him they relied on facial-recognition tools to identify him in the pictures, he recalled, and the Trib found no indication in court documents of other investigative work before his arrest. He was handcuffed at work, charged with soliciting a child via computer and unlawful use of a two-way communications device, spent a night in jail, wore an ankle monitor, was barred from contact with his two young children for a month and a half and could not live at home for nearly three months. The account's owner, a man with a prior conviction for the same offence, admitted on 31 July 2025 using the photos; charges against the father were dropped the next day and a judge ordered the case expunged on 4 August 2025, though the records stayed publicly online for more than a year. The family says the ordeal cost $45,000 in lost wages and legal fees and traumatised the children. The sheriff's office did not respond to the Trib's questions.

Contextual tracker case High reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 29/09/2026

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: 30/09/2026. Dataset available under CC BY 4.0.