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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
6
Countries with reported events
4
Located 5 of 6 cases · 1 unknown
Languages in checked sources
4
Recorded for 6 of 6 cases

2 cases have no reviewed AI-to-person relation yet: 0 not yet reviewed and 2 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.

Reported severity MediumLow
More filters: AI relation, use, setting, sources and responses
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6 of 1099 published cases

14 Sept 2026 to 25 Oct 2026SwedenUnidentified AI writing tool

Luleå university board suspends two students for six weeks over unauthorised AI use whose submitted work cited invented sources, local paper reports

The disciplinary board of Luleå University of Technology (LTU) in northern Sweden decided six disciplinary cases and suspended five students from teaching for six weeks, from 14 September to 25 October 2026, Norrbottens-Kuriren reported on 21 September 2026. In two of the cases, according to the newspaper, the matter was unauthorised use of AI in which the submitted work contained invented source references, among them a reference to a book that does not exist. The other suspensions concerned plagiarism of a classmate's lab report and unauthorised notes at an exam; a sixth student received a warning. The report does not name the AI tool, the courses or the students and quotes neither the students nor the university.

Core concern Low reported severity Internal Action

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 23/10/2026

14 Oct 2026South KoreaUnidentified AI problem-solving tool

Konkuk University says a student got a zero and an F after a friend solved midterm questions with AI and relayed the answers to a smartwatch

In a midterm exam on 14 October 2026 in a major course of about 100 students at Konkuk University in Seoul, a student sent the questions to a friend through a camera attached to the chest; the friend solved them using AI and sent the answers to the student's smartwatch, according to the professor's notice to students as reported by JoongAng Ilbo on 21 October 2026. The professor became suspicious of a perfect score, asked the student to solve the same problems again, and the student could not and confessed. The university said the professor gave the student a zero on the exam and an F in the course under its regulations for cheating by writing answers using AI and a smartwatch, and the department decided to ban cameras and watches from the final exam onward. The AI tool is not named, and no consequence for the friend is reported.

AI relation unknown Low reported severity Internal Action

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 22/10/2026

2026South KoreaUnidentified AI coding tool

Seoul National University professor penalised 36 of 62 computer engineering students who, he says, admitted using banned generative AI on assignments

In the first semester of 2026, 36 of the 62 students in a fourth-year computer engineering course on computer networking at Seoul National University were penalised for using AI on coding assignments, according to an SNU official and the course's professor as reported by JoongAng Ilbo and Yonhap on 30 July 2026. The syllabus said all course activities would be conducted without generative AI. The professor gave zero marks on the affected assignments to 25 students who came forward and a D-minus course grade to 11 who admitted AI use only when interviewed; he said all 36 admitted using AI. The department's student government objected that the criteria were unclear and that honest students were penalised while others may not have been; the professor rejected this. On 16 October 2026 a lawmaker raised SNU's AI cheating incidents at the National Assembly audit, and the university president said its AI guidelines needed to be supplemented.

Core concern Low reported severity Internal Action

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 5 sources, 4 underlying accounts · Added 21/10/2026

29 Jan 2026NetherlandsUnidentified AI writing tool

Leiden law student's thesis invalidated and exams barred over references he says an AI tool distorted or invented; Council of State annuls fraud sanction

A law student at Leiden University used a generative AI tool to spell-check his bachelor thesis and to check and order its reference list. Seven of the thesis's footnote references (one of them appearing twice, out of 36 footnotes with references) were wrong in the final version; according to his explanation, the tool had distorted some of them, for example with wrong years or author initials, and invented others. On 29 January 2026 the faculty's exam board declared the thesis invalid and excluded him until 28 January 2027 from the thesis track and every exam in the faculty's programmes, reasoning that the fictitious references indicated unauthorised use of generative AI and therefore fraud. The university's appeals board for examinations found in March 2026 that he had plausibly shown he used generative AI to prepare his reference list, which it called a permitted use, but held him responsible for the non-existent sources; the exam board then re-imposed the invalidation with an exclusion until 29 July 2026, and the appeals board upheld that in July. On 14 October 2026 the Administrative Jurisdiction Division of the Council of State (Raad van State) found his explanation plausible, held that no more than carelessness had been shown, and annulled the sanction; the thesis must now be graded, and the examiner may take the incorrect references into account in the grade.

Core concern Medium reported severity

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

Apr 2026United StatesUnidentified AI coding tool (suspected)

Over half of a Purdue programming class dropped the course after the professor emailed 200-plus students alleging AI cheating; allegations later withdrawn

In April 2026 the professor teaching CS 240, a programming course at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, emailed more than 200 students in the class alleging that he had caught them cheating on assignments with AI tools, according to the Lafayette Journal & Courier. The email gave the students a form on which to admit or deny AI use on each assignment and warned that failure to respond would result in an F for the course and an unfavourable letter to the dean of students. It was sent on the deadline for dropping a class, and more than half of the class unenrolled. A student quoted by the newspaper said the main objection was that he had not said which assignments were flagged or how they were detected. After a weekend of attention on social media and a class discussion called by the department, it was announced that the allegations of cheating and AI use so far in the semester were dropped and that anyone could re-enrol. The professor said he would keep using his AI detection tool. No source describes what that detection method was, and how many of the accused had used AI is not known.

AI relation unknown Low reported severity Internal Action

AI involvement suspected · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 15/10/2026

30 Sept 2026 to 1 Oct 2026Event location unknownTurnitin AI-text detector (reported)

First-person forum account: a student in an AP Research course says their teacher reported that Turnitin's AI checker found their source annotations '100% AI' and said the checker never gives false accusations; the student says they wrote the work themselves and can show document history

In a public post to r/ApplyingToCollege early on 1 October 2026 (UTC), a student taking the Advanced Placement (AP) Research course writes that their teacher told them that day that their source annotations had been found to be '100% ai' by Turnitin. The student says they did not use AI. They say their document history shows them typing over the course of an hour and that some sentences closely follow notes they wrote for an earlier assignment. They also say they had faced no AI accusation in a research course with the same teacher the year before. By the student's account, the teacher said the matter would be discussed later and that Turnitin's AI checker feedback never ends up being a false accusation. The student says the accusation leaves them upset and unsure how to defend themselves. No grade or disciplinary outcome is reported. The account is uncorroborated, and one commenter doubted it.

Contextual tracker case Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 01/10/2026

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: 04/11/2026. Dataset available under CC BY 4.0.