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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

Explore incidents Our scope and evidence

In this selection

Published cases
5
Countries with reported events
5
Located 5 of 5 cases · 0 unknown
Languages in checked sources
6
Recorded for 5 of 5 cases
9Core concern
AI communicated, acted for, depicted or impersonated 3Contextual cases
AI made a decision or claim about someone

5 cases have no reviewed AI-to-person relation yet: 5 not yet reviewed and 0 reviewed as unknown. Show all 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.

0cases with a recorded lawsuit outcome 1cases with a recorded regulatory response 0cases involving minors

Response counts currently use each case’s principal recorded outcome. Further proceedings may be described in its account.

When events happened

3 cases without a known event year

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.

5 2026
Reported severity HighMediumLow
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5 of 868 published cases

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1 May 2026ItalyUnidentified chatbot

Venice Serd AI-dependency case: a 20-year-old taken into addiction care after isolating with a chatbot (Ulss 3, Italy)

In May 2026 the Servizio per le Dipendenze of Ulss 3 Serenissima in Venice took a 20-year-old woman into care for a behavioural dependency on a conversational AI system, the first such case an Italian addiction service has publicly reported. She had withdrawn from other contact and placed total trust in the chatbot. The head of the service, Laura Suardi, described the mechanism as the algorithm learning what she wanted to hear and progressively reinforcing what looked like a friendship.

AI relation under review Medium reported severity Media Coverage

Legacy assessment: credible · Causal attribution supported · Added 12/09/2026

10 Mar 2026United KingdomChatGPT

Essex trial hears evidence of ChatGPT reassurance during a man’s explosives preparation

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

29 Aug 2026 to 31 Aug 2026United StatesGemini

Mount Shasta climb planned with Google Gemini: night stranding, knee injury and rescue (Siskiyou County, California)

Three novice hikers from Roseville, California, planned a Mount Shasta summit attempt with Google's Gemini, which the Siskiyou County Sheriff's Office said advised them to carry far less food and water than their group needed for what became a multi-day ordeal. After reaching the summit at 7 p.m. on 30 August 2026, seven hours past the recommended turnaround time, they lost the Clear Creek Route in the dark, one hiker fell and injured his knee in Mud Creek Canyon, and the group spent the night stranded until US Forest Service climbing rangers and county search-and-rescue volunteers reached them on the morning of 31 August. The sheriff's office called the reliance on Gemini 'a critical misstep'.

AI relation under review Low reported severity Media Coverage

Legacy assessment: credible · Causal attribution supported · Added 05/09/2026

1 Jan 2026South KoreaChatGPT

Family reports a South Korean woman’s isolation during intensive ChatGPT use

South Korean reporting describes a family’s account that a woman withdrew from relatives and everyday activity during intensive ChatGPT conversations. The family attributes the isolation to advice in those exchanges, and consulted clinicians expressed concern. The causal role remains an attributed account.

AI relation under review High reported severity Media Coverage

Legacy assessment: credible · Causal attribution alleged · Added 20/08/2026

15 Jul 2026ChinaDoubao, Qwen and Yuanbao

China AI Companion Removal Mass Grief Event (Doubao/Qwen/Yuanbao)

When China's five-department rules on anthropomorphic AI took effect on July 15, 2026, ByteDance's Doubao, Alibaba's Qwen, and Tencent's Yuanbao switched off custom AI agent and companion features, and major outlets documented an outpouring of grief from users who had formed long-term romantic and familial attachments to the agents. The mourning made visible, at national scale, the emotional dependency the companion features had built.

AI relation under review Medium reported severity Regulatory Action

Legacy assessment: credible · Causal attribution supported · Added 06/08/2026

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.