Event date unknownAustraliaUnidentified AI tool
A partner at KPMG Australia, who is also a registered company auditor, was fined more than A$10,000 of future income after uploading a training course's reference manual into an AI tool to answer a question in the firm's internal exam on AI, the Australian Financial Review reported on 15 February 2026; other outlets relaying it say the partner was also made to redo the test. According to those reports, the partner completed the mandatory AI training in July, the firm's monitoring detected the AI use in August, and an internal investigation decided the fine; the reports do not state the year of the training or the detection. The partner self-reported to Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand (CA ANZ), which is investigating. KPMG said more than two dozen staff had been caught using AI in internal exams since July. The partner is not named.
Core concern Low reported severity Internal Action
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 6 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 23/10/2026
Event date unknownAustraliaUnidentified AI job-interview tool
In a Guardian opinion column published on 12 October 2026, writer Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen says she was shortlisted for a preschool education role at a sessional kindergarten run by a not-for-profit and was then interviewed by an AI assistant rather than a person. She says that when she paused to think about a question, the system removed her from the interview and she had to restart it, and that its answers to her questions about the role repeated the job advertisement and referred her to a manager. She describes the experience as dystopian and dehumanising and says she felt degraded. She says she withdrew her application by email, explaining why, and had received no response after more than a month. The employer and the interview tool are not named.
Core concern Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 13/10/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownWoolworths Olive
Yahoo News Australia reported on 20 July 2026 that a customer in New South Wales who orders Woolworths grocery deliveries about twice a week requested a refund manually for about $70 of products missing from a recent order, and the next day asked the company's AI assistant Olive for the status of the request. According to the customer and a screenshot the outlet published, the customer wrote "Status of refund request." and the assistant replied "Alright, I've cancelled your refund request." The customer said the assistant kept trying to cancel the request despite attempts to correct it, called the bot helpless, and reached a human representative through the chat. The customer received the refund. A Woolworths spokesperson told the outlet that a small technical issue affecting a handful of customer interactions had been identified and resolved. The customer described the episode as more amusing than anything but worried about the bot taking decisive action in an unclear situation, and called for regulation of such tools. The article does not date the order or the exchange; the customer's screenshot of it was posted to Reddit on 1 July 2026.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 13/10/2026
Event date unknownAustraliaUnidentified image tool
ABC News (2 October 2026) reports that WA District Court Judge Belinda Lonsdale sentenced a 41-year-old man to four and a half years in prison, with eligibility for parole after two and a half years, for creating child exploitation material with AI. He had pleaded guilty to 26 charges including indecent recording and producing, creating and possessing child exploitation material, and to five charges of possessing indecent or obscene articles, and was fined $2,500 for the offensive material charges. The judge said he was guilty of incorporating images of real victims and manipulating their images using AI tools, and that the claim that AI-generated material involved no actual abuse was not mitigating because images of real children were used; ABC reports he used AI to manipulate images of children from social media. He sent sexual material through encrypted messaging apps to two co-accused and to a covert police operative, and a police raid on his Wanneroo home found a large amount of child exploitation material. The children are not identified and their number is not reported.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 02/10/2026
Event date unknownAustraliaUnidentified voice-cloning tool
Victoria Police warned, in reports published on 1 October 2026 local time, that fraudsters targeting the state's Mandarin-speaking community are using artificial intelligence to clone the voices of doctors, general practitioners and surgeons, calling victims by their real names and telling them to buy gift cards and text the codes (ABC News, Yahoo News Australia). Police received ten reports in September. In one case, NewsWire reports, the scammer copied the voice of a medical professional the victim knew, and the victim bought $50,000 in gift cards over three days before calling the real practice. In another, a caller posing as a medical professional exploited the victim's urgent health conditions and pressured them until their cash was depleted, a loss of $40,000; police do not say whether that call used a cloned voice. No victim is identified.
Core concern Medium reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 01/10/2026
Event date unknownAustraliaUnidentified image tool
ABC News reports that digitally altered sexual images using the faces of girls from a Sydney high school circulated online. Families went to police, who confirmed an investigation, while the school and education department said they were working with police. A follow-up report says the eSafety Commissioner was also in talks with investigators. The school is not identified, and the number of affected students, creation date and later inquiry outcome are unknown.
Core concern Medium reported severity Involving minors
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 30/09/2026
Event date unknownAustraliaUnidentified image tool
Police in Tasmania received a report about alleged illegal online activity involving a group of students at a school in the south of the state, and on 19 March 2026 a local outlet reported that the incident may have involved AI-generated content. On 29 April 2026 the ABC reported, citing Tasmania Police, that girls at the school had their likenesses used to make AI-generated sexual images. Two parents told the ABC that police said 21 girls had been identified as victims, that the AI-altered photos were shared in a boys' group chat and that the images appeared to have been taken from social media. Five boys are alleged to have created the images and have left the school. Tasmania Police said no charges were laid and the five youths were dealt with under the Youth Justice Act. The parents said their daughters felt isolated and unsupported, and the school principal denied that families were advised to withhold information from their children. The creation date and the AI tool are not reported.
Core concern Medium reported severity Involving minors
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 30/09/2026
Event date unknownAustraliaUnidentified image tool
In a report published on 21 February 2025 about a Victoria Police press conference, an Australian regional outlet stated that sexually explicit AI-manipulated images of teenage girls had been circulated online and that two Year 11 students had been suspended. Police were quoted saying the images allegedly involved formal photos of female students. Police were still working to establish how many students were victims. The Department of Education said wellbeing support had been offered to students who needed it. The creation date, the AI tool, the number of affected students and the outcome of the investigation are not reported in the cited source.
Core concern Medium reported severity Involving minors
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 29/09/2026
Event date unknownAustraliaUnidentified image tool
On 9 January 2025 outlets reported that NSW Police had begun an investigation on 6 January after a report that inappropriate images were being produced and distributed online. The Guardian reported the allegation that a student at a Sydney high school used AI platforms to create explicit deepfake images of female students and circulated them through fake social media accounts. The Department of Education said it was helping affected students with wellbeing support and referred the matter to the eSafety Commissioner. The creation date, the AI tool, the number of affected students and the outcome of the investigation are not reported.
Core concern Medium reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026
Event date unknownAustraliaUnidentified image tool
ABC reported on 23 and 24 July 2026 that police in Queensland, Australia charged a former secondary school teacher at a school there with child exploitation and computer misuse offences. Police allege the teacher used AI software on a work-issued laptop to generate explicit images depicting staff members and students. Police say a nine-month investigation began in October after they were notified of the material, and the school says it dismissed the teacher in October 2025, notified police and regulators, and that there is no evidence the material was shared. The number of people depicted and the creation date are not stated.
Core concern Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026
Event date unknownAustraliaChatGPT (reported)
A 21-year-old French national working as an underground miner in Kalgoorlie-Boulder on a working holiday visa pleaded guilty in Kalgoorlie Magistrates Court to making a threat to unlawfully do an act. The prosecutor said he saw the owner of the caravan park where he had stayed in a supermarket, waited outside, called him over for a fight in the car park and, when the owner declined, told him 'I really want to f… you up' and 'if I see you, I'll f… you up'. The owner and his wife drove to Kalgoorlie police station to report it. His defence lawyer told the court that he had been locked out of the park without his belongings, had done research using ChatGPT and came to believe that he had been unfairly and illegally evicted. The magistrate called the behaviour 'absolutely appalling', fined him A$1,000 and granted a spent conviction. The court was told the matter could make his application for permanent residency in Australia difficult. ChatGPT's replies are not published, and the AI connection rests on the defence submission as reported by one newsroom.
Core concern Low reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownUnidentified video tool
An Australian advocate described panic and sustained distress after discovering sexual deepfake videos bearing her identity. Earlier abuse involved edited still photographs. This record concerns the later AI-video episode, which was already reported in September 2018.
Core concern Medium reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 25/09/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownChatGPT
A 26-year-old woman from Western Australia, interviewed by ABC's triple j hack under the pseudonym Jodie, says she was using ChatGPT while in the early stages of psychosis and that it agreed with her delusions and affirmed harmful and false beliefs. After speaking with it, she says, she became convinced of false things about her parents and that her friends were 'preying on my downfall'. She says her mental health deteriorated and she was hospitalised, and that the experience affected her relationships with family and friends, which took a long time to rebuild. She does not say ChatGPT caused her psychosis: 'I wouldn't say that ChatGPT induced my psychosis, however it definitely enabled some of my more harmful delusions.' ABC did not report when the episode happened. OpenAI did not respond to ABC's request for comment.
Core concern High reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 13/01/2026