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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
3
Countries with reported events
1
Located 2 of 3 cases · 1 unknown
Languages in checked sources
2
Recorded for 3 of 3 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 Low
More filters: AI relation, use, setting, sources and responses
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3 of 726 published cases

2026ChinaDoubao (reported)

China: user says Doubao misstated an air-ticket refund fee, costing him 600 yuan, then promised compensation it could not pay; he says he filed suit

According to his own social-media posts and video, as reported by Dahe Daily (15 May 2026) and National Business Daily (20 May 2026), a user in China who had booked flights from Shijiazhuang to Chongqing for 2 May 2026 decided to drive instead and asked the Doubao chatbot about the refund fee. Doubao told him he could safely refund and that the fee would be small (only 5% in National Business Daily's account, under 100 yuan in Dahe Daily's). He refunded without checking the airline's rules and was charged about 40%, 600 yuan. When he returned to the chatbot, Doubao said it would handle the claim, promised to pay him 600 yuan itself if the money was not recovered by 6 May and produced a 'compensation commitment letter'. On 6 May it said it would pay by midnight and asked for his WeChat payment code; on 7 May it said that as an AI it could not make transfers and admitted its error. He then used Doubao to draft a complaint, was told by it that he did not need a lawyer, and on 12 May submitted a suit against the app's operator, Beijing Chuntian Zhiyun Technology, according to a screenshot he posted (Dahe Daily names the Beijing Internet Court). His posts had been deleted by 19 May. Doubao's customer service told Dahe Daily the matter had been recorded; Doubao and ByteDance did not answer National Business Daily. Whether the court accepted the case, and its outcome, are not reported.

Core concern Low reported severity Lawsuit Filed

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

Apr 2026Event location unknownXiaogua (reported)

Buyer's complaint says a used-car app's AI customer service said the price covered transfer fees, then a salesperson asked for 1,000 yuan more

People's Daily reported on 6 August 2026, in a piece on the China Consumers Association's complaint figures for the first half of 2026, a complaint a consumer filed on 5 May 2026 through the consumer associations' 315 complaint platform against a Beijing used-car brokerage company. According to the complaint, he chose a used car on the company's app in April 2026, and before he paid a 2,000-yuan deposit the platform's official AI customer service, called Xiaogua, told him clearly that the 28,700-yuan price already included the transfer and registration fees. During the transaction a salesperson asked him to pay a separate 1,000-yuan transfer fee. He said the conflicting information from the AI customer service and the staff led him to make the deal on wrong information, and asked the platform to check the facts and refund the deposit. The paper called it a typical case, and an association official said the output of AI customer service an operator deploys forms part of the operator's service. The outcome of the complaint is not reported.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 14/10/2026

17 Apr 2026 to 19 Apr 2026ChinaDoubao

Jiashan, Zhejiang: a man chose his mother's burial date on Doubao's recommendation, the chatbot then contradicted itself, and after a relative's road accident his family blamed the date; he sued the app's operator for an apology and damages

A man living in Jiashan county, Zhejiang, whose mother died suddenly on 17 April 2026, asked the ByteDance chatbot Doubao which day was auspicious for her burial after disagreeing with a feng-shui master's choice of 20 April; Doubao recommended 19 April and he persuaded his family to follow it. When he asked again what time to bury her, Doubao said 19 April was not an auspicious day and repeated that answer when pressed; relatives had already been notified, so the funeral went ahead on the 19th. Not long afterwards a relative was seriously injured in a traffic accident and family members blamed the burial date, saying it had broken the feng shui; he says family relations became tense and relatives blamed him. His complaint to the operator went unanswered, and, with a complaint drafted with Doubao's help, he sued Beijing Chuntian Zhiyun Technology for an apology and damages. Jiashan County People's Court heard the case on 3 September 2026 as a network-tort dispute; the company denied any tort or fault, the plaintiff's side attacked the user agreement as a standard-form contract, and no judgment had been reported by 21 September. The story was reported by Jiaxing's municipal broadcaster on 15 September and relayed nationally; the relative's injury is the family's attribution, not an established consequence.

Core concern Low reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 6 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 21/09/2026

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: 17/10/2026. Dataset available under CC BY 4.0.