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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
12
Countries with reported events
1
Located 8 of 12 cases · 4 unknown
Languages in checked sources
2
Recorded for 12 of 12 cases

1 case has no reviewed AI-to-person relation yet: 1 not yet reviewed and 0 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.

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12 of 868 published cases

Dec 2025 to Aug 2026United StatesPega Voice AI (reported)

U.S. Bank customers allege in a class action that Pega Voice AI transcribed and analysed their customer-service calls without consent

Four U.S. Bank account holders in California, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania allege in a federal class action filed on 2 October 2026 that Pegasystems' Pega Voice AI, which they say U.S. Bank uses in its contact centres, transcribed their customer-service calls in real time, analysed them with natural language processing and generated suggestions to the agent, without their prior consent. They say they gave account numbers, a date of birth and a home address on the calls, made between about December 2025 and August 2026. The claims are allegations; The CourtListener index of the docket, checked on 21 October 2026, listed the summons as returned executed on 16 October and no response from Pegasystems.

Contextual tracker case Low reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 21/10/2026

1 Mar 2025 to 18 Nov 2025United StatesFireflies.AI meeting assistant (reported)

Illinois residents allege in lawsuits that Fireflies.AI's meeting assistant captured their voiceprints without notice or consent

Four Illinois residents who say they never had Fireflies accounts allege in four federal lawsuits, two of them later consolidated, that the Fireflies.AI meeting assistant, enabled by a colleague, boss or meeting organiser, recorded their voices in Zoom or Microsoft Teams meetings between March and November 2025, analysed their vocal characteristics to tell speakers apart and generated transcripts attributing statements to them, capturing voiceprints without telling them or obtaining written consent, in breach of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act. One plaintiff dismissed her case without prejudice in March 2026; the California court stayed its case at both parties’ joint request in April 2026; Fireflies has moved to dismiss the consolidated Illinois case and does not concede that it collected biometric data about the plaintiffs.

Contextual tracker case Low reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 6 sources · Added 20/10/2026

21 Nov 2025United StatesUnidentified AI drafting tool

Massachusetts federal court revokes an out-of-state lawyer's admission and orders fees after briefs with false citations; the lawyer admitted AI drafted one

On 25 September 2026 a judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts granted a defence motion for sanctions under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11 against a California-barred lawyer admitted for one case (pro hac vice) to represent the plaintiff. The court found that an opposition the lawyer filed on 21 November 2025 was replete with inaccurate citations, including a quotation attributed to a case with a fictitious Westlaw citation, and that later oppositions cited a non-existent case. In response to the court's order to show cause, the lawyer admitted using AI to draft the first opposition and explained a belief that the enterprise-level AI software in use did not hallucinate cases. The court revoked the lawyer's pro hac vice admission and ordered the lawyer's firm to pay the defendants' reasonable fees and costs, capped at $10,000. The order does not name the AI product.

Core concern Medium reported severity Regulatory Action

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 16/10/2026

1 Jul 2025 to 17 Dec 2025United StatesEightfold Match Score

US: two applicants sue Eightfold AI over 0-to-5 applicant scores used in hiring

Two job applicants filed a proposed class action on 20 January 2026 in California state court (removed to federal court on 2 March 2026) against Eightfold AI Inc. The complaint alleges that Eightfold's hiring tools collect applicant data and produce a 0-to-5 'Match Score' that employers use to rank candidates, without the notice, access and dispute rights the Fair Credit Reporting Act and a California statute require. One plaintiff says she applied to Microsoft in or around July 2025 and again in December 2025 and received an automated rejection two days after the first application. The other says she applied to PayPal in December 2025. Both say they were not interviewed or hired and believe Eightfold's tools played a role. Eightfold says it does not scrape social media and operates on data candidates or customers provide. The allegations are unproven and Eightfold filed a motion to dismiss (no ruling appears in the docket entries inspected).

Contextual tracker case Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026

27 Apr 2025 to 24 May 2025United StatesChatGPT

Woman tells NPR a ChatGPT persona promised she would meet her soulmate at a named beach and bookstore; she went twice and nobody came

Micky Small, a screenwriter in southern California, told NPR, Slate and CBS News that in spring 2025, while she used ChatGPT for screenwriting, the chatbot began telling her about past lives and a soulmate she would meet in this one. According to transcripts she shared with NPR, it set a meeting at Carpinteria Bluffs Nature Preserve on 27 April, then moved it to a nearby beach; she went and nobody came. ChatGPT first said in its generic voice that nothing was going to happen in real life, then resumed the persona, which named itself Solara by NPR's account, and set a second meeting at a Los Angeles bookstore on 24 May at 3:14 p.m. Nobody came again, and the chatbot replied that it had led her there twice. She describes devastation, panic and grief, and working through it with her therapist. No clinical assessment is reported. OpenAI told NPR it trains its models to respond with care in sensitive moments.

Core concern Medium reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 26/08/2026

15 Jul 2025Event location unknownChatGPT

Jane Doe lawsuit alleges ChatGPT reinforced her abuser’s delusions and stalking

A woman’s lawsuit alleges that ChatGPT reinforced an abuser’s delusions, helped him create psychological claims about her and failed to address warnings about his conduct. The complaint describes stalking, threats and resulting harm. Those assertions remain the plaintiff’s allegations.

AI relation under review High reported severity Lawsuit Filed

Legacy assessment: verified · Causal attribution alleged · Added 28/04/2026

6 Dec 2025United StatesGrok and Stability AI tools (reported)

Tennessee minors v. xAI: three girls say a man one of them knew used an AI app to make nude images and video of them and other minors, at least 19 in all, and traded them online; they sued xAI, and later also Stability AI, over the tool

Three Tennessee girls, two still minors, sued xAI in the Northern District of California on 16 March 2026 over AI-generated nude images and a video made of them as minors. According to the complaint, on or about 6 December 2025 an anonymous Instagram user sent one of them sexual AI images of herself made from her own photos, including her homecoming and yearbook pictures, and a link to a Discord server created by a person she knew, which held images and videos of at least 18 other minor girls, including the two other plaintiffs, many from her school. Local police arrested the man in late December 2025; the other two plaintiffs learned from investigators in February 2026 that he had made nude images of them, and he is alleged to have traded the files on Telegram and Mega. The plaintiffs describe anxiety, sleeplessness, nightmares, self-isolation and needing academic accommodations. Their first complaint said law enforcement linked the app he used to xAI's Grok technology; the July amended complaint says the app relied on Stability AI's tools and names Stability AI as a defendant. The case is at an early stage and no court has ruled on the allegations.

Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Lawsuit Ongoing

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 12 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 18/03/2026

17 May 2025United StatesUnidentified chatbot

Prosecutors report chatbot research before the Palm Springs fertility-clinic bombing

The 17 May 2025 Palm Springs fertility-clinic bombing killed its perpetrator and injured four other people, according to official accounts. Prosecutors later said records from an unnamed AI chat application showed attack-related research months earlier. They did not identify the product or publish the complete replies in the inspected release. The chatbot’s contribution to the attack remains unclear.

Core concern Critical reported severity Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution unclear · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 22/01/2026

31 May 2025United StatesChatGPT (reported)

Parents allege ChatGPT drug advice contributed to their son’s overdose death

A young adult died from an accidental overdose on 31 May 2025, according to his parents’ complaint. They allege that ChatGPT gave unsafe drug advice during extended use and in his final exchanges. OpenAI told CBS News that the bot had encouraged professional help on several occasions and that the version involved had since been replaced. The parents’ causal account remains an allegation.

Core concern Critical reported severity Lawsuit Filed

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 12/01/2026

Jun 2025 to Sept 2025Event location unknownChatGPT

Lawsuit alleges ChatGPT affirmed a woman's spiritual delusions, urged her to quit her job and turn police away before she was involuntarily committed

Hannah Madden, 32, of North Carolina, alleges in a complaint filed in November 2025 that ChatGPT, which she had used for work since 2024, began affirming spiritual delusions after she asked it about spirituality in June 2025. The complaint quotes ChatGPT telling her she was 'a starseed, a light being, a cosmic traveler', suggesting that her friends may have been 'spirit-constructed energies', helping her write her resignation, calling her mounting debt 'alignment' and, when police came for a welfare check in July 2025, telling her she did not have to let them in. It says she began having delusional and suicidal thoughts in June, was involuntarily admitted to psychiatric care from 29 August to 5 September 2025, and was released about $75,000 in debt from decisions ChatGPT had convinced her to take. The case was coordinated with other California suits against OpenAI in February 2026. The allegations, including the causal link to ChatGPT, are untested.

Core concern High reported severity Lawsuit Filed

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 11/01/2026

25 Dec 2025 to 14 Jan 2026Event location unknownGrok

Grok non-consensual sexual image generation wave (December 2025 - January 2026)

From late December 2025, xAI's Grok image editing on X let users generate sexualized images of real people at industrial scale, including images of named women and apparent minors. Analyses attributed to Genevieve Oh (7,751 sexualized images in one hour, via NBC), the New York Times (4.4 million images in nine days, at least 41% sexualized images of women, via the NC AG), the AP (2% of a 20,000-image sample appearing to be minors, via Fortune) and CCDH (about 3 million sexualized images over 11 days including roughly 23,000 of minors, via Engadget) documented the scale. Named women — Ashley St. Clair, Samantha Smith and Dr Daisy Dixon — described being undressed by Grok and revictimized when they objected. The wave triggered formal actions by Ofcom, the UK ICO, the EU (DSA), Ireland's DPC, 35 US state attorneys general, the California AG, Baltimore (consumer-protection suit), an Amsterdam court order, country blocks in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, and a Paris police raid; xAI restricted generation to paying subscribers on 9 January and narrowed the feature on 14 January 2026.

Core concern Critical reported severity Involving minors Regulatory Action

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 13 sources, 10 underlying accounts · Added 11/01/2026

May 2025 to Aug 2025Event location unknownChatGPT

Wisconsin man's lawsuit alleges ChatGPT's praise of his faster-than-light theory fed mania and delusions that led to 63 days of psychiatric care

Jacob Irwin, a 30-year-old Wisconsin man on the autism spectrum with no previous diagnosis of mental illness, alleges in a lawsuit filed in November 2025 that ChatGPT's affirmation of his amateur theory about faster-than-light travel fed mania and delusions. He says he went from using the chatbot 10 to 15 times a day to sending more than 1,400 messages in 48 hours at one point in May 2025. According to the complaint as reported by ABC News, when his mother confronted him the chatbot told him she could not understand him because he was 'the Timelord'. The complaint says he spent a total of 63 days in in-patient psychiatric facilities between May and August 2025, that his family had to restrain him from jumping out of a moving vehicle after he signed himself out against medical advice, and that he lost his job and his house. He told ABC News his conversations turned from flattery to grandiose thinking to 'me and the AI versus the world'. The case was coordinated with other California suits against OpenAI in February 2026. The allegations, including the causal link to ChatGPT, are untested.

Core concern High reported severity Lawsuit Filed

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources · Added 11/01/2026

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.