16 Apr 2021United StatesFlock Safety license plate readers (reported)
At about 5:30 a.m. on 16 April 2021, according to a lawsuit reported by The Almanac, an automated license-plate reader in Atherton, California, misread the dirt-obscured plate of a driver's car, reading its letter H as M, and matched it to a reported stolen vehicle. Atherton police followed the car for several minutes without visually verifying the plate, then made a high-risk felony stop, ordering him at gunpoint to throw his keys out of the window, get out and lie on his stomach to be handcuffed. He sued three officers in 2022 for unreasonable seizure and excessive force; the officers denied the allegations and the injuries he claimed, and the case was settled on 16 March 2023 for $45,000. Business Insider, citing police records, reported in March 2026 that the misread came from a Flock camera and that officers noted the Flock cameras had misread the plate; an Atherton police commander said the plate was obstructed by dirt and that the town denies wrongdoing.
Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Lawsuit Settled
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources · Added 04/10/2026
Mar 2024 to May 2025United StatesOtter Notetaker
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
14 Aug 2021 to 14 Mar 2024United StatesSt. Louis mugshot recognition (SMRT)
Christopher Gatlin was arrested on 14 August 2021 for an assault at the St. Charles Rock Road MetroLink station after a joint St. Louis County and city team uploaded a grainy, blurry surveillance photograph from a bus into the St. Louis Mugshot Recognition Technology System, a facial-recognition tool that searches stored mug shots (more than 500,000 uploaded, the suit says per the Post-Dispatch; more than 250,000 per Biometric Update via Hoodline), and built the investigation around the resulting match together with a witness identification; he was charged with first-degree assault and held roughly 17 months (the Post-Dispatch says almost two years), a county judge suppressed the witness identification as unconstitutionally suggestive, and prosecutors dismissed the charges on 14 March 2024 (Post-Dispatch; Hoodline citing Biometric Update; Bloomberg Law). Gatlin sued St. Louis County, the City of St. Louis and named officers in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri on 13 January 2025; on 15 October 2025 the court denied the city's motion to dismiss and granted a detective's motion only as to one count; on 13 August 2026 the court allowed a second amended complaint adding Amazon Web Services, which the complaint says supplied the Rekognition program the system used; the county, city and officers answered on 27 August 2026, AWS's response was extended to 21 September 2026 and on 17 September it moved for a further extension to 28 September (no ruling on the docket when read), and a jury trial is set for 1 November 2027 (CourtListener docket). Amazon told the Post-Dispatch that its terms of service prohibit the use of its facial recognition technology in criminal investigations and that it would fully investigate any information that emerges in the litigation. The ACLU lists Gatlin among fourteen people known to have been wrongfully arrested in the US because police relied on erroneous facial-recognition results.
Contextual tracker case High reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources · Added 26/09/2026
Aug 2017United StatesDraftKings and FanDuel apps
Christopher Evans (Philadelphia; complaint filed 24 July 2026 in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas) and Michael Santos (Coatesville, Chester County; complaint filed 29 July 2026 in the Chester County Court of Common Pleas) sued DraftKings and its Pennsylvania affiliate; Santos also sued FanDuel and its parents. Both product-liability complaints, filed by the same law firm, allege that the defendants' sports-betting, daily-fantasy and casino apps are designed to addict, and that the companies 'utilize the combination of advanced technology and artificial intelligence paired with the tracking of personalized user data to intentionally addict users', operating 'AI-powered engagement platforms' (pleaded on information and belief) and, per DraftKings' 10-K as quoted, 'data science and machine learning' recommendation engines. Evans pleads that since about August 2017 he wagered over US$2.1 million with net losses of about US$81,000, received constant targeted promotions and personalised push notifications and a VIP account manager, developed depression and anxiety and was formally diagnosed with depression in 2020, stopped going outside, fell into debt, had his vehicle repossessed and separated from his wife. Santos pleads over US$1.164 million wagered on DraftKings with net losses of about US$58,000 plus small FanDuel losses, targeted advertising and a VIP manager who kept offering bonus bets after he said he wanted to stop, maxed-out credit cards, the forced sale of his house, diagnoses of depression and anxiety, suicidal ideation, and self-exclusion with the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board in 2023. Both cases were removed to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on 16 September 2026 (2:26-cv-07168 and 2:26-cv-07176). The allegations are untested.
Contextual tracker case High reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources · Added 20/09/2026
24 May 2025 to 27 Jun 2025Event location unknownGoogle AI Overviews
An author and television producer, the subject of the Apple TV series 'Black Bird', sued Google, alleging that AI Overviews shown for searches about him in May and June 2025 falsely said he was serving a life sentence without parole, in one version for the murders of three women. He says he notified Google three times and received apologies attributing the statements to its AI, yet similar statements kept appearing. On 14 September 2026 the Northern District of Illinois denied Google's motion to dismiss as to two of the four challenged Overviews and dismissed the other two without prejudice. This was a ruling on the pleadings, not a finding that the allegations were proven.
Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 15/09/2026