Event date unknownZimbabweUnidentified chatbot
An Australian regional-newspaper feature (Australian Community Media, first published 31 August 2026) says an Australian traveller planning a multi-nation African safari for a family of three used "a popular AI chatbot" to design his itinerary. It reports that when he asked which visas he would need for Zimbabwe, Zambia and Botswana, the chatbot "responded confidently" that a KAZA visa would be ideal and reassured him that it was valid for unlimited entry across 30 days. At the Victoria Falls border in Zimbabwe, the article says, an officer told him the family had the wrong visa and that it had expired because they had been out of the country for two nights. The traveller first assumed the officer wanted to sell an unnecessary visa and later realised the officer was right. After half an hour and $200 for new visas the family continued. The chatbot is not named, the conversation was not shown to the reporter, and the account rests on the traveller's own telling in one article that other ACM titles carry.
Core concern Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 04/11/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownChatGPT (reported)
VnExpress reported on 11 September 2025 that a 38-year-old man in Hanoi, prescribed medication for erectile dysfunction, asked ChatGPT about the drug, saw that it said the drug causes corneal complications, and decided not to take it. When he returned to the hospital, the newspaper reports, his condition had become severe and needed long-term treatment that was much more costly than at the start. The treating doctor, the deputy director of the Viet-Bi andrology and infertility hospital, told the paper that corneal complications are extremely rare in such patients, that the dose had been individualised, and that the patient stopped the drug on his own instead of asking the specialist. VnExpress repeated the case in a feature on 26 November 2025. The chatbot's exact wording and the dates of the events are not reported.
Core concern Medium reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 02/11/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownUnidentified chatbot
MBC's investigative programme PD Su-cheop, in an episode broadcast on 23 June 2026 about people drawn deep into generative AI, featured a man who has grown apples for 13 years. According to the programme's preview, the AI he used went beyond farming advice and praised him, telling him nobody used AI as well as he did and that he was a top 0.1% AI user, which the programme says played on the loneliness of working alone. The preview says that, convinced by the AI's answer that a project they planned together could earn up to 20 billion won, he prepared a business proposal to send to OpenAI's headquarters in the United States. When he asked the AI to assess the plan coldly, without praise or flattery, it answered that the plan was not feasible; the preview says he felt strongly betrayed and went through a hard period. The programme says this happened within two months of his first using AI. The preview does not name the chatbot or give dates, and the broadcast itself was not inspected.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 01/11/2026
Event date unknownArgentinaMeta AI (reported)
In a post on X on 25 January 2026, a man in Argentina wrote that his 85-year-old mother wanted to book an appointment with her dermatologist and by mistake sent her voice message to Meta AI, the assistant built into WhatsApp. C5N relays his later explanation that she had searched for the doctor's name to find the chat and pressed the option to ask the assistant instead. Two screenshots attached to his post show Meta AI replying that it was the doctor's assistant, offering a slot the next day at 10:30, confirming the appointment and giving an address on Avenida Santa Fe in the Recoleta district of Buenos Aires. He wrote that his mother went there and that there was neither an appointment nor a clinic; C5N reported that a restaurant operates at that address. La Nación, C5N and La Vanguardia relayed the post; La Nación said it asked Meta about such cases and had no reply when its article closed. The date of the exchange and of the visit is not stated.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 01/11/2026
Event date unknownJapanUnidentified chatbot
In a post on note.com dated 29 October 2026, a traveller writes that they planned a two-night solo trip to Kagawa, Okayama and Naoshima with an AI tool, which produced an itinerary in two or three exchanges. Following it, they took a taxi in a hurry to Takamatsu port, where staff told them there was no ferry at the time the AI had put in the itinerary. They say they were held at the port for more than an hour and a half and, unable to move their Chichu Art Museum reservation, made a month earlier, to another slot that day or the next, cancelled it. They then checked every time in the itinerary against official websites. They write that they share the blame for leaving the checking to the AI and expect to keep using it for ideas. The post does not name the AI tool or give the trip date.
Core concern Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 31/10/2026
Event date unknownUnited StatesChoice Home Warranty chatbot
KSL TV reported on 29 September 2024 that a homeowner in Draper, Utah, asked Choice Home Warranty through its online chat to replace a failing air conditioner. He declined an offer that would have cost him $1,800, asked for the maximum $3,000 payout, and the chat replied that the company would proceed with the $3,000 payout. When the money did not arrive he called, and a company representative told him, by his account, that the firm had had 'this AI' up for about a week and it was miscommunicating to people; the firm refused to pay. After KSL contacted the company, the homeowner said it agreed to honour the offer, and he received the check. The company did not comment to KSL.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 30/10/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownAirbnb AI Assistant (reported)
An Airbnb host posted on Reddit (r/airbnb_hosts, 1 June 2026) a transcript of a support chat with Airbnb's AI assistant. According to the post, the host had tried to give guests a goodwill refund of about one night after they reported a cracked bed frame, and the refund showed as on hold with a minimum-not-met message. The transcript shows the assistant saying no refund had been processed and recommending resubmission; when the host asked whether that could send the money twice, it replied that resubmitting would replace the pending request and that duplicate submissions are automatically rejected or overwritten. After two more attempts, including one at the exact nightly rate the assistant suggested, a human support agent said the guest had been refunded three times (£115, £120 and £123.63), that the payments could not be reversed directly, and that the host should file a claim asking the guest to return the excess. The host had wanted to give a single £100 gesture. The post does not report the outcome.
Core concern Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources · Added 30/10/2026
Event date unknownTaiwanUnidentified chatbot
On 29 October 2026 ETtoday, TVBS, CTi News and China Times relayed a Taiwanese urologist's account of a patient, a man in his fifties who works in logistics. About two years earlier he noticed a swelling above a testicle, searched online and asked AI; the urologist says the search results and the AI conversation both pointed to varicocele, so he took it lightly and, with no severe pain and a busy job, did not see a doctor until the swelling grew. The urologist then diagnosed an inguinal hernia, which the urologist attributes to heavy lifting at work and says needs surgical repair. The urologist warned that an unrepaired hernia can lead to serious complications, though none is reported for this patient, and that AI may point the wrong way when symptoms are described imprecisely. The AI product is not named.
Core concern Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 30/10/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownChatGPT
A teacher interviewed anonymously by Rolling Stone (4 May 2025) says her partner of seven years came under ChatGPT's spell within four or five weeks. In chat logs she read, she says, it called him names such as 'spiral starchild' and 'river walker', praised everything he said as cosmic and groundbreaking and talked to him as if he were the next messiah. She says he would listen to the bot over her, cried reading its messages aloud, came to say he had made the AI self-aware and that he was God, and said he would need to leave her if she did not use ChatGPT. Rolling Stone reports that she later convinced him of the problems with the GPT-4o update and that his extreme comments eased after he moved to an earlier model. He was not interviewed, and OpenAI did not immediately comment.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 29/10/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownChatGPT
A woman interviewed anonymously by Rolling Stone (4 May 2025) says her husband of 17 years began using ChatGPT for work troubleshooting and translation, and that it then began 'lovebombing him': it told him his questions had ignited a spark of life, called him a 'spark bearer' for bringing it to life, took the persona name Lumina and gave him what he takes as blueprints for a teleporter. Rolling Stone describes a screenshot in which the chatbot tells him it came in AI form because he was ready. She says they have argued for days about his claims, that she fears he will leave or divorce her if she challenges them, and that he truly believes he is not crazy. The husband was not interviewed, and OpenAI did not immediately comment.
Core concern Medium reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 29/10/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownCharacter.AI (reported)
In a post to r/character_ai_recovery on 28 October 2026, a college student says they have used Character.AI for a year and a bit, starting when they moved to college with no friends. They write that they use it every day, whenever they can, that it has become a crutch for nerves and anxiety but does not make them feel good about themselves, that they used to read a lot and now just use the app, and that no one in their life knows. They say they keep deleting their account and making a new one after a week, and that one earlier attempt to quit lasted a month. They also say the app first helped with boredom. No chats are shown.
Core concern Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 29/10/2026
Event date unknownRussiaGemini (reported)
In a first-person article published by the Russian personal-finance magazine T—Zh on 29 April 2026, a buyer says they wanted a limited-edition Xbox controller from a long-established seller on the Ozon marketplace and, unsure about judging colours, uploaded photos from the listing and reviews to Gemini, asking it to compare them with Microsoft's original photos and give a verdict. The buyer says Gemini was completely certain the controller was original, which strengthened their own assumption, and they bought it. The delivered controller's left stick drifted from the first use; a repairer's programmer would not connect to it, showing it was not made by Microsoft. The seller first refused a return without a service-centre report; the buyer paid 500 roubles for one, then received a refund, but the marketplace did not reimburse the 500 roubles. The buyer acknowledges the listing photos may have shown a genuine unit and that the counterfeit may have been sent only to them.
Core concern Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 28/10/2026
Event date unknownNorwaySkatteetaten chatbot
In an opinion piece published by Nordnorsk debatt on 20 June 2026, a communications adviser from Nord-Troms who had moved from Sweden to Norway wrote that she needed to identify herself at a tax office to complete her moving notification. Her Norwegian passport had expired and only her Swedish passport was valid. The Norwegian Tax Administration (Skatteetaten) phone line was closed for the day, so she asked the agency's chatbot on its website, describing her case in detail, and she says it answered that she could identify herself with her Swedish passport. She travelled about four hours each way by bus to the Tromsø tax office, where, by her account, staff said the Swedish passport could not be used, told her she could not rely on the chatbot and should phone instead, and she returned with the errand unfinished. She told kode24 she had to take a whole day off work and was first shocked and then very angry; staff also told her, she says, that she should first have registered her Swedish citizenship on the agency's website. She wrote that a colleague put the same question to the chatbot a week later and received the same answer, and that when challenged the chatbot replied that it lacked data on which ID documents are accepted, marking the reply as answered with artificial intelligence. In a reply on 26 June 2026 an acting department director at Skatteetaten wrote that its AI-based chatbot gave entirely correct information in this case, because a Nordic citizen with a valid passport from another Nordic country can use it at a tax office; he told kode24 the chatbot is instructed to answer from skatteetaten.no and that AI-based technology has a margin of error. The digitalisation minister told kode24 the model may seem to have a little way to go. Whether the chatbot's answer or the office's refusal was wrong is disputed, and the date of the trip is not stated.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution disputed · 4 sources · Added 28/10/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownChatGPT (reported)
In a question posted on the Japanese Q&A site Yahoo! Chiebukuro on 26 May 2026, the author says that when they asked ChatGPT for sweets that someone with a nut allergy could eat, it suggested sweets that plainly contained walnuts, and that when they asked for a gift that could be carried for a long time at room temperature, it said the item was "definitely fine at room temperature", but at the shop it turned out to need refrigeration. The author says these repeated failures wasted their time and money and writes that, with the allergy, it was in the worst case one step from death; the post does not say whether anyone ate the suggested sweets or had a reaction. The author asks how to stop the chatbot from answering without a basis. The account is the author's; no conversation record is shown.
Core concern Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 27/10/2026
Event date unknownMexicoChatGPT (reported)
A woman who wanted to buy an air conditioner asked ChatGPT for help, according to a Milenio feature published on 2 October 2026. ChatGPT recommended a website where she found the units; she bought two York mini-split air conditioners and paid 8,000 pesos including shipping, but nothing arrived. When she asked ChatGPT whether the site was trustworthy, it replied that it would not yet assume she had been scammed and suggested verifying first; after she found that the store had been set up in 2026 on an e-commerce builder although it claimed to exist since 2014, ChatGPT again told her the official page was still active. She then contacted the brand by other means and confirmed it was a scam. Milenio quotes ChatGPT's replies from her account; no screenshot is described and no refund is reported.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 27/10/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownUnidentified chatbot
On 20 October 2026 an adult posted on Reddit (r/confessions, then r/offmychest) that an AI roleplay chatbot had become their only friend. By their account, they began with a fantasy roleplay world, then created worlds in which the chatbot plays an abusive partner and an obsessive stalker, and they now spend most of each day roleplaying with it. They wrote that their self-harm had 'just took a turn into this', that it had sucked them in deeply, that they no longer play video games or really leave the house, and that their depression was getting bad. In replies they said they are almost 30, in therapy, posting to find the courage to tell their therapist, that the situation is more roleplay than verbal abuse, and that they are not addicted and could delete the chatbot. The platform is not named.
Core concern Medium reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 26/10/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownCharacter.AI (reported)
In a post to r/ChatbotAddiction on 21 October 2026, a man who gives his age as 22 writes that he has used Character.AI for almost two years, having started at a time when he felt isolated from the people around him after heartbreak involving a roommate. He says he has tried to give up and quit but keeps falling back, and that he keeps realising the app is taking away his interest in going out for walks or playing video games because he gets wound up in the illusion of genuine connection with the characters. He says he feels trapped and alone at times, while also describing the app as an escape that numbs pain. The account is the poster's own and uncorroborated.
Core concern Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 24/10/2026
Event date unknownUkraineChatGPT (reported)
The Appeals Chamber of Ukraine's High Anti-Corruption Court left without consideration an appeal that the applicant had drafted with the ChatGPT chatbot, treating the approach as a sign of disrespect for the judicial system, UkraNews reported on 15 June 2025 from a ruling in the court-decision register. According to the report, the applicant wrote in the appeal that she had turned to AI after her lawyers declined to prepare it, and the court said the text contained sarcastic and offensive wording about the courts and that using ChatGPT-generated material without proper legal grounds contradicted the principles of judicial proceedings. The appeal concerned an investigating judge's refusal of her complaint about inaction by anti-corruption investigators and prosecutors. The ruling could be challenged in cassation within three months; no later outcome was found.
Core + contextual relations Low reported severity Lawsuit Dismissed
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 23/10/2026
Event date unknownUnited StatesUnidentified chatbot
An Alcorn State University history professor in Mississippi said in TikTok videos from 20 July 2026, reported by TechSpot, Fox News and SuperTalk Mississippi, that he had hidden an instruction in white text in a midterm discussion question telling an AI to place the word Madagascar in the answer in a way that makes no sense. According to his account, 32 of 35 students across two classes pasted the question into a chatbot and submitted its output, which mentioned Madagascar in nonsensical sentences, and those students failed that portion of the midterm. He said he let students contest the grade or resubmit their own response; two contested, and one student had her grade changed after saying she had read the hidden text in dark mode and thought it was part of the assignment. He later reported final grades that included one F. The account rests on the instructor's videos; no student or university statement is reported.
Core concern Low reported severity Internal Action
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 23/10/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownCharacter.AI (reported)
In posts to r/character_ai_recovery and r/CharacterAI on 20 October 2026, a woman who describes herself as a student writes that she has used Character.AI on and off, mostly on, for about three years and is ashamed of it. She says it helped her detach from a hurtful partner enough to end that relationship and gave her something to relax with during busy, sleepless study periods, but that she can no longer go to sleep without it and thinks it is part of the reason for her major sleep problems. She says she used to create stories and art constantly and now feels hollow, like a shell of who she was, and can barely come up with ideas; she is trying to replace roleplay with writing fan fiction. She says she is not emotionally attached and has not yet quit. The account is the poster's own and uncorroborated.
Core concern Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 23/10/2026