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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
4
Countries with reported events
2
Located 4 of 4 cases · 0 unknown
Languages in checked sources
1
Recorded for 4 of 4 cases

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

Reported severity MediumLow
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4 of 680 published cases

Dec 2024 to Sept 2026AustraliaUnidentified AI writing tool

Tasmania parole media ban quashed after state conceded reliance on likely AI-hallucinated case law

In December 2024 the Parole Board of Tasmania added a condition to the parole of Susan Neill-Fraser, released in 2022 after serving 13 years for murder and who maintains her innocence, barring her from communicating with media to claim innocence or wrongful conviction; a broader condition replaced it in May 2025. On 15 September 2026 the Supreme Court of Tasmania declared the conditions invalid. Her counsel told the court that the board's secretary had used artificial intelligence to prepare a rationale document justifying the condition and that it cited case law that did not exist. The Human Rights Law Centre, which represented her, says the State conceded that the board's decision-making was affected by a document containing legal authorities that were likely AI-generated hallucinations, and the ABC reports the court found the board relied on that document. The board had withdrawn the condition in August 2026. Tasmania's Attorney-General announced an independent investigation of the board's professional standards over its use of unverified AI, and the Justice Department announced a review of AI use in past parole decisions.

Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Investigation Opened

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 6 sources, 4 underlying accounts · Added 06/10/2026

Mar 2024 to May 2025United StatesOtter Notetaker

United States: seven people who say they had no Otter account allege its AI Notetaker recorded calls without consent; a judge let core privacy claims proceed

Seven people in California, Illinois and Washington state are suing Otter.ai in a consolidated class action in the Northern District of California. Each says another meeting participant used Otter's AI Notetaker on a Zoom or Microsoft Teams call they joined, and that Otter recorded, transcribed and stored their conversation without their consent; six of them date their calls between March 2024 and May 2025. They say they were not Otter account holders. The calls they describe include a medical consultation, meetings with a financial professional and work discussions. They allege that Otter keeps the recordings and uses them to train its speech-recognition models, that it captured voiceprints of the Illinois plaintiffs, and one of them says learning of the recording left him frustrated, embarrassed and stressed. On 13 August 2026 the court found that the alleged interception of private conversations was a concrete injury and let the federal wiretap, California eavesdropping and Illinois biometric claims proceed, while dismissing some claims. Otter's answer to the consolidated complaint, filed on 17 September 2026, says it lacks knowledge of the plaintiffs' experiences and denies the allegations.

Contextual tracker case Low reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 6 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026

14 Feb 2024United StatesFlock Safety license plate readers

York County, South Carolina: Iraq War veteran Steven Melvin says deputies held him at gunpoint and made him kneel for more than five minutes outside his Lake Wylie apartment complex in February 2024 after a Flock license-plate reader misread his plate and flagged his BMW as stolen; he sued in June 2026

According to a lawsuit filed on 29 June 2026 and reported by The Herald (Rock Hill), a York County sheriff's deputy stopped Steven Melvin, 42, on 14 February 2024 as he pulled into his apartment complex near Lake Wylie, after receiving a Flock license-plate-reader alert that a stolen dark-coloured BMW sedan was in the area. The deputy approached Melvin's black BMW with his gun drawn and aimed at him and made him kneel with his hands over his head for more than five minutes; after calling for backup and checking his information, the deputy determined the car was not stolen. The camera had read the first letter of his South Carolina tag incorrectly, matching a stolen BMW one letter off. A sheriff's internal-affairs review in November 2024 found the deputy's actions reasonable and blamed an illegally tinted plate cover, for which Melvin received a verbal warning; an email cited in the filing says the cameras had read his plate correctly 13 times that month. Melvin says the stop caused him trauma and emotional distress. The sheriff's office removed the case to federal court in August 2026 and denies violating his rights.

Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Lawsuit Filed

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 28/09/2026

1 Nov 2024 to 28 Jan 2026United StatesTurnitin AI-text detector

Adelphi accused Orion Newby of AI plagiarism after a detector flagged his paper; a Nassau County judge ordered the finding expunged

Orion Newby, an Adelphi University first-year student with language and auditory processing disabilities, received a zero in November 2024 on a World Civilizations paper after the professor suspected it was AI-generated and the university relied in part on AI-detection software; he was ordered to attend a plagiarism workshop and his appeal was denied, leaving him one finding from suspension or expulsion. Newby — who had written the paper with 15-20 hours of tutor support through the university's own disability program — said the detectors flagged his citations, and two other detectors scored the paper as human. After the family sued, New York State Supreme Court Judge Randy Sue Marber in Nassau County ruled on 28 January 2026 that Adelphi's finding and its denial of his appeal were 'without valid basis and devoid of reason' and ordered his record expunged. The family spent six figures on legal costs.

Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Lawsuit Filed

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 15/09/2026

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: 15/10/2026. Dataset available under CC BY 4.0.