Jan 2024 to Jan 2025Cambodia, South KoreaUnidentified video tool
South Korean prosecutors indicted a married couple in February 2026 on charges that, from January 2024 to January 2025, they ran phone-fraud groups in Cambodia that targeted Koreans with romance-and-investment scams; according to the prosecutors, the husband used deepfake technology to make YouTube videos in which he posed as an investment expert, while the wife built relationships with victims in private chats, and 97 victims lost about 10.1 billion won. Both admitted the charges, and on 24 July 2026 the Ulsan District Court sentenced the husband to 15 years and the wife to 9 years in prison, noting that the victims described severe harm while the defendants had made no effort to compensate them. Prosecutors appealed; at the appeal hearing on 22 October 2026 they asked for 17 years for the husband, and a joint appeal judgment is pending.
Core concern High reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 31/10/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownUnidentified video tool
Al-Sharq reported on 25 June 2026, in an article quoting the woman's lawyers, that the Investment and Trade Court, in what the paper called the first case of its kind, ordered a news channel to compensate a woman whose personal photos and video clips it had processed with artificial intelligence, without her permission, to create a virtual character presented as a digital news presenter under an assumed name. The channel had launched the presenter with programmes, promotional material and a press conference, and removed the material after the woman's lawyer sent a legal warning. She also argued that news delivered by the character conflicted with her own convictions, which attributed views to her falsely. A court-appointed intellectual-property expert found the AI output to be an independent work, but the court held that the channel had exploited her images and simulated her with AI, violating her rights to her image and privacy. The appeal court reduced the award from 700,000 to 100,000 Qatari riyals, and the Court of Cassation declined the channel's further appeal, making the judgment final. The woman and the channel are not named, and the dates of the broadcasts and rulings are not given.
Core concern Medium reported severity Lawsuit Settled
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 31/10/2026
Apr 2023GermanyUnidentified AI writing tool
In April 2023 the German weekly Die Aktuelle (Funke media group) ran a front cover with a picture of Michael Schumacher and the headline 'Michael Schumacher, the first interview', with a strapline saying it sounded deceptively real; inside, the quotes attributed to him had been produced by artificial intelligence. Schumacher has not been seen in public since a serious brain injury in December 2013, and his family keeps his condition private. The family announced legal action; Funke called the article tasteless and misleading, apologised and relieved the editor-in-chief of her duties. In May 2024 a family spokeswoman confirmed a Munich Labour Court judgement and a settlement by Funke, with compensation of 200,000 euros reported by Reuters and, as a reported figure, by the AP. The sources read do not name the AI tool the magazine used.
Core concern Medium reported severity Lawsuit Settled
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 5 sources, 4 underlying accounts · Added 31/10/2026
3 Oct 2026Event location unknownTaopiaopiao AI assistant
Shenzhen Special Zone Daily and its Dute news app reported on 4 October 2026 that a customer of Taopiaopiao, Alibaba Pictures' cinema-ticket app, said its AI customer-service assistant swore at her. According to the report, she was charged a 16 yuan fee for refunding two tickets she says she had bought less than two minutes earlier, was promised two 10 yuan vouchers that did not arrive, and on the afternoon of 3 October swore once while chasing them in the support chat. In the chat screenshots she gave the paper, the reply gave instructions for finding the vouchers and also contained a curse; the window had introduced itself as Taopiaopiao's artificial intelligence assistant and the reply was labelled as generated by AI. She said she was stunned and that a human agent would not explain it. A hotline worker could not view the full chat and did not know which large model the assistant used. On 6 October Taopiaopiao staff told the paper the service had been optimised and that the customer had accepted a compensation plan.
Core concern Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 30/10/2026
Event date unknownChinaUnidentified video tool
According to a CCTV report of August 2026 quoting the deputy head of the criminal division of the Yuhua District People's Court in Changsha, Hunan, a university student close to graduation bought access to a technique that turned still face photos into AI-generated moving face videos able to pass one bank payment platform's face-recognition check. Upstream members of fraud groups, which CCTV says usually lure people into installing remote-control software, sent him the victims' personal details and photos; he converted the photos into AI face videos through a third-party website and, with the verification codes, reset the victims' payment passwords so that a money-laundering crew could move money out of their linked bank accounts. In under four months the accounts of three victims lost more than 50,000 yuan in total. The court, taking into account his surrender, admission and compensation of the victims, sentenced him to one year and ten months in prison and a 3,000 yuan fine; the judgment has taken effect. The dates of the thefts and of the judgment are not reported.
Core concern Medium reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 30/10/2026
Feb 2025RussiaUnidentified video tool
A court in Yaroslavl, Russia, ordered the parents of a seventh-grade pupil to pay a mathematics teacher 10,000 roubles each in compensation for moral harm, according to reports in March 2026 of the court's own announcement. The court's press service said that in February 2025 the boy filmed the teacher at work without her knowledge or consent, then used a neural network to generate a video from the footage in which she turns into a man with a bare athletic torso, and posted it in the class chat. The teacher told the court that afterwards she did not want to go back into the classroom, felt the pupils' sideways looks and that her authority had been damaged. The parents contested the claim, saying their son had only applied a trending effect and that the teacher disliked him; they did not dispute that he filmed her and made the video. The court found that the video harmed her honour, dignity and professional reputation.
Core concern Medium reported severity Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 27/10/2026
Jun 2024Event location unknownUnidentified face-swap and voice-synthesis tool
A CCTV News report of 29 September 2026 says the Hangzhou Internet Court in Zhejiang recently concluded a portrait-rights case brought by a beauty blogger. According to the report, from June 2024 an online skincare-sales company, without the blogger's consent, took short videos and livestream footage the blogger had published and used AI synthesis to make more than 30 fake videos in which the blogger appeared to promote its products. The court found that the company had used AI face swap and the recombination of image and sound tracks to fabricate the videos for commercial gain, infringing the blogger's portrait rights. In court the company acknowledged that it had synthesised and published the videos without the blogger's authorisation, said staff had made them out of fun and curiosity, and said it had taken them all down after receiving the lawsuit papers. The court ordered the company to pay 15,000 yuan for economic loss and the costs of protecting the blogger's rights and 5,000 yuan in compensation for emotional distress, and to publish an apology prominently on the platform concerned for at least 30 days. The blogger's claim that the products sold more than 100,000 orders was not accepted as proof of loss or profit.
Core concern Low reported severity Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 26/10/2026
23 Jun 2025NetherlandsChatGPT
On 23 June 2025 a recruitment agency summarily dismissed a recruitment consultant it had employed since January 2024, giving seven grounds in its dismissal letter. One ground, misuse of company resources and an integrity breach, concerned questions he had put to ChatGPT on his work laptop about how to obtain a severance payment from the employer: the employer said he made defamatory statements about it there and breached his duty of confidentiality with the information he entered. He did not dispute the queries. In a decision given on 27 February 2026, the sub-district judge of the Rechtbank Zeeland-West-Brabant ruled the dismissal invalid, because the employer had not established another ground and the seven grounds formed a single composite reason. On the ChatGPT ground the judge found that private use of the laptop had not been forbidden, that he had shared only information about his employment relationship and no company secrets, and that this was culpable to a limited extent. In a final decision of 22 May 2026 the court awarded him a transition payment of 2,976.04 euros gross, fixed damages of 4,565.70 euros gross and costs, but refused the 25,000 euros of fair compensation he sought, weighing his limited income loss and his own culpable conduct, which it listed as including his sharing of information about the employment relationship. His fixed-term contract would have ended on 1 August 2025, when he started a new job.
AI relation unknown Medium reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 25/10/2026
2024ItalyUnidentified image tool
In 2024 an associate professor at the University of Genoa took photos from the social-media profiles of six students, turned them into sexual images and shared them in Telegram chats. According to la Repubblica's October 2024 report, Genoa prosecutors accused him of 'undressing' the photos with apps that use artificial intelligence; the investigation began on 1 October 2024 after the rector's complaint, the postal police searched his office and home, and he was suspended. The university later dismissed him. According to Open and Fanpage, which report the judgment, the regional administrative court for Liguria (TAR) rejected his appeal against the dismissal in September 2026, citing a search record that found sexual virtual images on his computer matching those posted, and his interrogation, in which he admitted posting the images and creating them with software. The court found the repeated conduct harmful to the students' dignity and to the university. The criminal case, for aggravated defamation, was closed; the lecturer paid the students compensation. The tool used is not identified.
Core concern High reported severity Internal Action
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 24/10/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownRevoicer text-to-speech (reported)
Greg Marston, a British voice actor, said in accounts published in 2023 that an AI-generated clone of his voice, built from a recording he had made for IBM years earlier, was being sold to websites that were using it to build a synthetic voice that could say anything. Julia Angwin's New York Times column (republished by the Oman Observer on 25 September 2023) says he found the clone, called Connor, online and heard his voice on the Wimbledon website during the tennis tournament; Cryptopolitan (1 July 2023) says he found it on Revoicer, an AI text-to-speech site. He had signed a release allowing the recording to be used in many ways, but said he never agreed to having his voice cloned to compete against him. He estimated that the clone had already lost him jobs and was working with a lawyer to seek compensation. IBM said it was aware of his concern and was discussing it with him. The outcome is not reported in the inspected sources.
Core concern Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 24/10/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownUnidentified image tool
In a consumer-protection typical case released on 12 March 2026, the Guangzhou Intermediate People's Court described a buyer who paid 411 yuan on a shopping platform for two women's tops after asking whether the model photos were real and being told that all the shop's pictures were real photographs. The garments that arrived differed markedly from the pictures in pattern, cut and style, and on review the pictures were all AI-generated, with no real photographs and no AI label on the product pages. The buyer sued for a refund and treble damages. The court held that businesses must review content they generate with AI, that undisclosed AI images differing significantly from the goods which lead a consumer to buy amount to consumer fraud, and that the clothing company must pay treble compensation. The release as relayed does not give the dates, the court of first instance or the amount.
Core concern Low reported severity Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 24/10/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownUnidentified image tool
The Beijing Internet Court reported in August 2025 that two members of a photography WeChat group had gone to court after one used AI software, without consent, to turn the other's profile portrait photo into revealingly dressed cartoon-style images and posted them in the group. According to the court, the claimant objected several times, but the defendant kept using the software to make images with exposed bodies and deformed limbs, including wooden legs and three arms, and sent them to the claimant privately. The defendant argued the images were not identifiable and were generated automatically by AI. The court found that group members could identify the claimant, that posting the images in the group infringed the claimant's portrait and reputation rights, and that the private messages infringed the claimant's general personality rights. It ordered an apology and compensation for mental harm.
Core concern Medium reported severity Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 22/10/2026
2025RussiaDeepSeek
A Moscow district court upheld an engineering company's dismissal of its head of sales for disclosing trade secrets, according to RAPSI and Pravo.ru reports of 27 July 2026. The grounds included uploading protected internal reports to the Chinese chatbot DeepSeek, forwarding company documents to her personal email and disclosing strategic information to a supplier. The court held that uploading trade secrets to DeepSeek is in itself a disclosure. She had sought a dismissal by mutual agreement and a contractual severance payment of 5 million roubles. The court rejected both, annulled a separate reprimand and awarded her compensation for moral harm. The decision was not yet final.
AI relation unknown Medium reported severity Lawsuit Dismissed
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 19/10/2026
21 Oct 2025 to 3 Apr 2026United StatesCoCounsel
In a published opinion of 3 April 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit addressed the briefs a lawyer appointed under the Criminal Justice Act had filed for an indigent defendant appealing a sentencing enhancement in a drug-trafficking case. The court noticed that the principal brief's file name was 'CoCounsel Skill Results' and found three quotations that appear in no legal authority and misstatements of two precedents. The lawyer admitted that a staff member had used Westlaw's CoCounsel to create the first draft, that he repeated the process for the reply, and that the false quotations came from artificial intelligence he did not verify. The court denied him compensation for the appeal, referred the opinion for possible disciplinary proceedings and to the Kentucky Bar Association, and by separate order removed him, locked his briefs and ordered replacement counsel to file new ones, which it said further delayed resolution of the defendant's appeal. The court acknowledged his candour and his 40 years without discipline.
Core + contextual relations Medium reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 19/10/2026
17 Oct 2026Event location unknownOpenAI support assistant (reported)
In a public post to r/ChatGPTcomplaints created on 17 October 2026, a ChatGPT Pro subscriber writes that OpenAI disabled their account two days after they paid $200 on 30 September, rejected their appeals for about two weeks, and on 17 October restored the account, acknowledging in an email that it had been disabled in error. The poster says they then asked OpenAI's AI-powered support assistant for compensation for the lost days while keeping the subscription. According to the poster, the assistant said it could not give credits, usage resets or discounts, offered a proportional refund of $86.67 and warned that accepting it would immediately cancel the subscription; the poster replied 'Yes, I approve', and the assistant then said the paid access had ended, that it could not reverse the refund, and suggested buying another subscription. The poster acknowledges the warning and their confirmation but says they misunderstood the consequence and had asked about the lost period, not the remaining one. The request was forwarded to a human specialist and was unresolved at the time of posting. The account is uncorroborated; the post was later removed by Reddit for an unstated reason.
Core + contextual relations Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 18/10/2026
2026ChinaDoubao (reported)
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
Nov 2025ChinaUnidentified image tool
Police in Yangpu district, Shanghai, say a customer extorted restaurants with medical records he had forged using AI software; Xinhua dates his first successful claim to November 2025. In the police account (Shangguan News, 26 February 2026) he claimed to have fallen ill after eating at a barbecue restaurant, showed a hospital visit record and medical invoice, and demanded 2,000 yuan in medical costs, threatening complaints and publicity; the restaurant paid. Police checked with other diners and the hospital, found he had no hospital record and the materials were forged, and say he confessed to using AI software to alter images of other people's medical records, replacing the name, date and amount. Police say he succeeded twice and failed twice, obtaining 2,500 yuan, and that he also filed complaints to market regulators with the forged material to pressure the restaurants. According to Xinhua's June report and the Procuratorate Daily, the Yangpu District People's Court convicted him of extortion and sentenced him to four months' criminal detention, suspended for four months, and a 2,000 yuan fine.
Contextual tracker case Low reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 3 sources · Added 17/10/2026
2024Event location unknownUnidentified voice-cloning tool
According to the Beijing Internet Court's account, released on 16 October 2026 among typical cases on online infringement involving older people, a culture company selling family parenting books commissioned a livestream sales host in 2024 to make promotional short videos. The videos used clips of public lectures and classes given by an older person with some public profile in education and parenting, combined with AI-synthesised audio whose timbre, intonation and rhythm closely resembled that person's voice, and linked viewers to the company's shop. Neither the images nor the audio had been authorised. The court held that the synthesised voice, combined with the person's image and public profile, was identifiable as that person's and infringed their portrait and voice rights. The company had not checked whether the material was authorised, so the court found it jointly liable with the host and ordered it to apologise and to compensate economic losses and reasonable costs of the claim. The amounts, the judgment date and the tool are not reported.
Core concern Low reported severity Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 17/10/2026
Jan 2025ChinaUnidentified AI quality-inspection tool
A technology company in Hangzhou, China, employed a worker to check the quality of answers produced by an AI large language model, at 25,000 yuan a month. In January 2025, citing the impact of AI technology on his project, it proposed moving him to an ordinary operations post at 15,000 yuan a month; when he did not agree, it notified him that his contract was terminated, according to a typical case released by the Hangzhou Intermediate People's Court on 28 April 2026 and reported by Hangzhou media and China National Radio. China National Radio, citing CCTV News, reports that the company told him only at arbitration that after a technical upgrade AI could do his inspection work. A labour arbitration panel and then two levels of court in Hangzhou found the termination unlawful and ordered compensation of more than 260,000 yuan. The court said that introducing AI to stay competitive is not in itself the kind of major change in objective circumstances that makes an employment contract impossible to perform, and that the pay-cut offer was not a reasonable proposal. The worker told CCTV that he had not found a suitable new job since the termination.
AI relation unknown Medium reported severity Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 7 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 16/10/2026
31 Oct 2025SpainUnidentified AI design tool
A company that designs and manufactures industrial furnaces dismissed a mechanical draughtsman on 31 October 2025 for objective reasons, citing a fall in business and the introduction of new technologies in its engineering department, including a model-based-definition design method and artificial-intelligence tools. According to press reports of the judgment, the dismissal letter put the cost of the tool licences at 4,725 euros a year against his gross annual salary of 29,871 euros and argued that the saving exceeded 80%. The social section of the Tribunal de Instancia de Bilbao declared the dismissal unfair, finding that the company had proved neither its economic losses nor the real implementation of the tools: an employee trained on the new method testified that she had never worked with it, and an implementation report was dated June 2026, seven months after the dismissal. The company must choose between reinstating the worker and paying 12,330.56 euros in compensation, less the amount already paid; the court rejected his claims that the dismissal was void and for a higher job category. One outlet reports that four draughtsmen were dismissed in total. El Periódico, which reported the same judgment in August 2026, dates it to early June 2026 and quotes the dismissal letter's statement that the company had introduced new artificial-intelligence systems that automate technical tasks previously done by specialised staff. The judgment was not read, and whether it is final is not reported.
AI relation unknown Medium reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 16/10/2026