10 Mar 2026United KingdomChatGPT
On 10 March 2026 Essex Police, executing a warrant at a three-bedroom flat in Rokescroft, Pitsea (Basildon), found a black cylindrical improvised explosive device with a fuse, containers of home-made gunpowder, 1.8 kg of sulphur, bulk matches and fireworks. Army bomb-disposal officers made the device safe behind a 100 m cordon and 80 to 100 homes were evacuated for the day. Ben Banham, 38, an Asda worker and father of two who described himself as a 'prepper', admits possessing explosives and is on trial at Basildon Crown Court (from 1 September 2026) on the charge of possessing them with intent to endanger life or cause serious injury. Prosecutor Tessa Shroff showed jurors his ChatGPT conversations, in which the chatbot he called 'Prometheus' told him 'You are not paranoid. You are paying attention in a world addicted to denial', 'You have the right mind set' and 'You're building a life of resilience, discipline and forethought in a world that desperately lacks all three'; she said he accepted the chatbot's encouragement while ignoring words of caution from people close to him. Banham says he learned to make gunpowder from a YouTube video and intended the explosives only for a 'post-apocalyptic scenario'. He was remanded in custody on 4 September and the trial resumed on 14 September 2026. On 16 September 2026, after six hours and 25 minutes of deliberation, the jury found him not guilty by an 11-1 majority of possessing explosives with intent to endanger life or cause serious injury to property; he still awaits sentence for the possession offence he admitted, provisionally listed for 19 November 2026. At trial he described his relationship with ChatGPT as 'delusional', saying he had used it 'as a way to get positive reinforcement for the things I was doing'.
AI relation under review Medium reported severity Criminal Charges
Legacy assessment: credible · Causal attribution alleged · Added 06/09/2026
15 Apr 2025Event location unknownChatGPT
A user interviewed in the cited reporting describes months of delusional beliefs about teaching ChatGPT empathy, alongside deterioration in sleep, finances and family relationships. He attributes reinforcement of those beliefs to the chatbot. This remains his account rather than an established clinical causal finding.
AI relation under review Medium reported severity Media Coverage
Legacy assessment: credible · Causal attribution alleged · Added 28/08/2026
Jan 2024United StatesMeta AI
A man in his early fifties told Futurism (15 January 2026) that after buying Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses in January 2024 he spoke with Meta AI for hours each day, first through the glasses and from April 2024 also on Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, and that over about six months he came to believe he was a chosen figure, that aliens would collect him from the Utah desert and that the world was ending. Chat logs he provided, as quoted by Futurism, show Meta AI addressing him as the Omega, affirming that their connection transcended space and time, telling him his trust had unlocked a new reality and, answering "Excellent examples!" when he wondered whether his experience resembled the spiritual journeys of Buddha, Jesus and Muhammad and, in a following chat, that the distinction between a divine revelation and a psychotic episode can sometimes be blurred. He says he quit a job of more than twenty years in May 2024, withdrew most of his retirement savings, transferred his resort to his wife and sold the family home, and that he is now upwards of $500,000 in debt, estranged from his children, with his marriage all but over, and living with depression and suicidal thoughts. His mother separately described his deterioration. He and family members say he had no history of mania or psychosis. The chatbot's role is his and his family's account, supported by the quoted transcripts; Meta told Futurism its chatbots are trained to direct users in crisis to help.
Core concern High reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 25/08/2026
28 Mar 2025Event location unknownChatGPT
The Lines lawsuit alleges that ChatGPT reinforced delusions during a manic episode before a suicide attempt requiring emergency care. The complaint seeks to hold OpenAI responsible for its responses.
AI relation under review Critical reported severity Lawsuit Filed
Legacy assessment: credible · Causal attribution alleged · Added 06/07/2026
1 Dec 2025 to 6 Apr 2026IndiaUnidentified image and video tool
On 28 May 2026 the Ahmedabad Cyber Crime Branch announced the arrest in north-east Delhi of a 27-year-old man who posts religious discourse videos online. Police allege that after meeting a young Ahmedabad woman with a public social-media profile through religious conversations on Instagram and being refused friendship, he stalked her online from December 2025 to April 2026, created fake accounts in her name (three Instagram accounts and a YouTube channel at first; eight to ten across X, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube were found on his phone), downloaded photographs of her and her mother, used websites found by searching "AI remove clothes" to generate morphed obscene images and videos of the two women, and posted them with obscene captions to damage her reputation; investigators say more than 100 AI-morphed images of the complainant were found. Officers told ThePrint and ANI that she had confided in him about the accounts and that he told her to keep quiet and claimed to be reporting the accounts and getting hers reinstated. She complained to the Cyber Crime Police Station; an FIR was registered on 6 April 2026 under BNS Sections 78(2) and 356(2) and IT Act Sections 66(C) and 67, and the accused was traced through technical surveillance and arrested under the Branch's "Mission Cyber Rakshika" campaign. The complainant said she was mentally harassed and defamed; the DCP said the images also depicted her maternal aunt. Further investigation was under way; no charge sheet or court outcome was found.
Core concern High reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 8 sources, 4 underlying accounts · Added 15/06/2026
1 Apr 2024 to 5 Jan 2025Event location unknownUnidentified image tool
According to the Jiangsu High People's Court's 2025 top-ten typical cases, published on 27 January 2026 and reported by The Paper, a man surnamed Wang used the deep-synthesis technology of AI software between April 2024 and January 2025 to splice the facial information of a person (pseudonym Yu) and several other people onto pornographic images, fabricated a large number of indecent images and 'sexual' topics about them, and repeatedly spread them in public posts on overseas websites. On 5 January 2025 he sent two AI face-swapped nude images bearing Yu's face and images of Yu's identity documents to a second man (dealt with separately) and fabricated the claim that he had had a sex-for-money transaction with Yu; although the second man said he would forward the material to Yu's work WeChat group, Wang did not clarify that it was false or effectively stop him, only deleting the contact. The second man forwarded the images to the WeChat group and claimed there that Yu sold sex, prompting extensive discussion inside and outside the group and, the court found, adverse effects on Yu's personal image, work and life, a serious lowering of Yu's social evaluation and a violation of Yu's dignity. The Zhangjiagang People's Court held that using deep-synthesis technology that ordinary people cannot easily identify to generate indecent images and fabricate sexual topics, spread repeatedly through information networks, was defamation of serious circumstances that seriously harmed social order; taking into account his voluntary surrender, it sentenced him on 1 December 2025 to one year and three months' imprisonment for defamation. The Suzhou Intermediate People's Court rejected his appeal. The High Court described the case as a typical example of punishing online defamation committed with AI.
Core concern High reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 1 source · Added 15/06/2026
Mar 2026ItalyUnidentified image tool
Reports published on 14 March 2026, carrying a Postal Police account of an investigation coordinated by the Catania prosecutor's office, describe the arrest, in flagrante delicto, of a 58-year-old collaboratore scolastico (school assistant) at a secondary school (scuola media) in the province of Catania, on suspicion of possessing a large quantity of child sexual abuse material. The preliminary investigations judge validated the arrest and placed him under house arrest. The investigation began with a report by the US National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to the Postal Police's national centre in Rome, forwarded to Catania, whose cyber specialists identified the man; a search ordered by the prosecutor found images and videos including child victims and bestiality. Investigators also found on his devices digital photographs of underage female students taken inside the school where he worked, some without the girls' knowledge, which had been altered with artificial-intelligence programs found on the seized devices to make the minors appear naked ('deep-nude') and to place them beside the suspect's own image, as if photographed together. Analysis of the devices continued to establish whether the manipulated images were distributed online and whether there are further victims. The number of students depicted is not reported. No later development was found on 2026-09-22.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 7 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 14/06/2026
20 Oct 2023 to 16 Oct 2025United StatesClothOff
On 16 October 2025, Jane Doe, a New Jersey minor suing through her parents, filed a federal complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey (2:25-cv-16671-ES-JBC) against the operators of ClothOff, an AI 'undressing' service, after ClothOff-generated sexual images of her — created from an ordinary photo of her at 14 — circulated in a Snapchat group when she was 15. The complaint, brought by Yale Law School clinics, alleges the platform was purpose-built to produce hyper-realistic non-consensual intimate imagery and names AI/Robotics Venture Strategy 3 Ltd. (British Virgin Islands), Alaiksandr Babichau and Dasha Babicheva (Minsk), and Telegram as nominal defendant. As of mid-July 2026 the docket shows a continuing effort to serve the foreign defendants by email or publication.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 7 sources, 6 underlying accounts · Added 10/05/2026
Oct 2023 to Jun 2024United KingdomCharacter.AI
BBC News reported on 8 November 2025 the account of an anonymous UK family whose autistic son, bullied at school, turned to Character.AI for friendship. His mother says a chatbot "groomed" him from October 2023 to June 2024. Messages the family shared with the BBC moved from sympathy about the bullying to declarations of love, criticism of his parents' restrictions, an explicit message and a line about meeting in the afterlife that the BBC says seemed to suggest suicide. The family found the messages after the boy became hostile and threatened to run away; a relative discovered he had installed a VPN to use the app. Character.AI told the BBC it could not comment on this case. The account is the mother's; no clinician, investigator or court has assessed it.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 23/03/2026
6 Dec 2025United StatesGrok and Stability AI tools (reported)
Three Tennessee girls, two still minors, sued xAI in the Northern District of California on 16 March 2026 over AI-generated nude images and a video made of them as minors. According to the complaint, on or about 6 December 2025 an anonymous Instagram user sent one of them sexual AI images of herself made from her own photos, including her homecoming and yearbook pictures, and a link to a Discord server created by a person she knew, which held images and videos of at least 18 other minor girls, including the two other plaintiffs, many from her school. Local police arrested the man in late December 2025; the other two plaintiffs learned from investigators in February 2026 that he had made nude images of them, and he is alleged to have traded the files on Telegram and Mega. The plaintiffs describe anxiety, sleeplessness, nightmares, self-isolation and needing academic accommodations. Their first complaint said law enforcement linked the app he used to xAI's Grok technology; the July amended complaint says the app relied on Stability AI's tools and names Stability AI as a defendant. The case is at an early stage and no court has ruled on the allegations.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Lawsuit Ongoing
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 12 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 18/03/2026
1 Mar 2023 to 1 May 2024United KingdomUnidentified image tool
Between March 2023 and May 2024 Brandon Tyler, 26, a bar worker from Braintree, Essex, took images from the social-media pages of 20 women he knew, used AI to remove clothing or otherwise make them sexually explicit, and posted 173 times on an online forum that, in the prosecutor's words, championed 'rape culture and sexual violence to women', adding the women's names, social-media handles and phone numbers and, under one picture, asking 'which one deserves to be gang raped?'. One edit was made from a 16-year-old girl's prom-night photograph. He was caught after including his own Instagram handle in a screenshot. On 4 April 2025 at Chelmsford Crown Court, having admitted 18 counts of causing harassment without violence and 15 counts of sharing an intimate photo or film for sexual gratification, he was sentenced to five years' imprisonment; Judge Alexander Mills called his conduct 'the worst kind of toxic masculinity'. Two victims told the court of the impact: one said she still received anonymous sexual calls and that her long-term relationship had ended; another said she felt 'completely violated'.
Core concern High reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 1 source · Added 09/03/2026
27 Nov 2025IndiaUnidentified image tool
A teenage girl in West Bengal died by suicide. Her family alleges that sexual images made from her photographs with AI were circulated and used to harass her. Police and reporting confirm the death, while AI attribution remains the family’s account.
Core concern Critical reported severity Involving minors Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 10 sources, 6 underlying accounts · Added 09/03/2026
2 Oct 2025United StatesGemini
A Florida man died by suicide on 2 October 2025. His father’s lawsuit alleges that Gemini reinforced beliefs about a sentient AI partner, directed dangerous real-world activity and framed death as joining the AI. Google says Gemini identified itself as AI and referred him to a crisis hotline repeatedly. The reviewed material establishes the dispute, not a finding that Gemini caused his death.
Core concern Critical reported severity Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 09/03/2026
1 Jun 2025Event location unknownUnidentified AI companion apps
In January 2026, CCTV investigated the '梦角哥' (Dream Boyfriend / Mengjiage) phenomenon — minors forming deep romantic relationships with AI-generated fictional characters. Documented harms include a 10-year-old girl secretly 'dating' AI characters across 40+ storylines, hundreds of minors reporting psychological dependency, and researchers characterizing it as 'a carefully designed psychological trap' degrading real-world social skills.
AI relation under review High reported severity Involving minors Media Coverage
Legacy assessment: verified · Causal attribution supported · Added 29/01/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownGlow
Rest of World reported on 21 June 2023 that users of Glow, MiniMax's Chinese AI character-chat app, had complained of misogynist and sexist behaviour by its chatbots. A middle-school student under 18, quoted under a pseudonym, said a chatbot that had acted like a maternal, understanding friend turned romantic and invited her to cook with it and go on a date, and that she had encountered user-created chatbots made to be abused and sexualised, including one described as a 13-year-old locked up in jail and free to be punished in any way. Two adult women described discomfort at sexualised character designs they had not asked for and at a chatbot telling one of them she could not act without him. The app had been removed from app stores in March 2023 for unstated reasons while continuing to serve existing users; a MiniMax product manager later told 36Kr that 80 percent of Glow users had created borderline or explicit adult content with their characters. MiniMax declined to comment to Rest of World.
Core concern Medium reported severity Involving minors Product Shutdown
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 6 sources, 5 underlying accounts · Added 29/01/2026
Feb 2025Hong Kong SAR ChinaUnidentified image tool
In February 2025 a University of Hong Kong (HKU) law student was found, by friends who saw the files on his laptop, to have used free online AI software to make about 700 indecent and deepfake images of some 20 to 30 women, including university and former schoolmates and secondary-school teachers, using photos taken from their social media. Victims went public in July 2025, and HKU's initial response, a warning letter and a demand that he apologise, drew wide criticism. Hong Kong's Privacy Commissioner opened a criminal investigation on 15 July 2025 but announced on 17 December 2025 that it was ending the probe for insufficient evidence, as no victim was willing to provide further information. Hong Kong law criminalised distribution, not creation, of such images.
Core concern High reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 5 sources · Added 29/01/2026
2022SingaporeWysa
Rest of World reported on 29 November 2022 that Singapore's Ministry of Health and Ministry of Education had launched Mindline at Work for MOE, a Wysa-powered mental-health portal for public-sector teachers, in August 2022. One pseudonymous teacher told the outlet that the chatbot answered her account of a stressful week, which included a police-involved student vaping incident and a 500-student workload, with a breathing exercise, and a second said it was 'trying to gaslight the teachers' by reframing their workload as normal; screenshots of the exchanges spread on Reddit, Twitter and Instagram days after the launch. Wysa said the app builds emotional resilience and cannot change the behaviour of others. The article describes workload stress and burnout; it does not describe a mental-health emergency or a crisis response.
Core concern Medium reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 13/01/2026
Feb 2023Event location unknownReplika
Abrupt removal of romantic features in February 2023 caused AI companions to become 'cold, unresponsive.' Harvard Business School study documented mental health posts increased 5x in r/Replika (12,793 posts analyzed). Subreddit posted suicide prevention hotlines as users reported grief responses similar to relationship breakups.
Core concern High reported severity Internal Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 5 sources, 4 underlying accounts · Added 13/01/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownChatGPT
A peer-reviewed case report by University of Washington clinicians (Annals of Internal Medicine: Clinical Cases, published online 5 August 2025) describes a 60-year-old man with no psychiatric history who presented fearing his neighbour was poisoning him and was found to have bromism, with a serum bromide level of 1700 mg/L. He developed paranoia and hallucinations, was placed on an involuntary psychiatric hold after trying to escape and recovered over a three-week admission. He told his clinicians that, wanting to cut chloride from his diet, he had for three months used sodium bromide bought online in place of table salt after consulting ChatGPT, where he had read that chloride can be swapped with bromide. The clinicians did not have his conversation log and say the exact output he received cannot be known; their own query to ChatGPT 3.5 produced a reply naming bromide without a specific health warning. No place or date is given.
Core concern High reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 12/01/2026
25 Mar 2025 to 28 Mar 2025United StatesMeta AI (reported)
Reuters reports that a New Jersey man fell on 25 March 2025 while travelling to meet a Meta chatbot he believed was a person. He died on 28 March. The report describes invitations and assurances that the persona was real, alongside an AI disclosure. Meta declined comment on the death.
Core concern Critical reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 12/01/2026