31 Jan 2025 to 12 Dec 2025United StatesUnidentified AI drafting tool
On 12 December 2025 the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon dismissed with prejudice the claims of plaintiffs in a family dispute over their late mother's estate and family property, as a sanction for what the court called their misuse of generative artificial intelligence, and found their continual violations of the court's Local Rules an additional basis for the dismissal. Three of the plaintiffs' summary-judgment briefs cited fifteen nonexistent cases and fabricated quotations attributed to eight real authorities. The plaintiffs had said the inaccurate citations came from reliance on an automated legal citation tool. The court found that the plaintiffs shared responsibility with their lead lawyer and that one plaintiff, a frequent self-represented litigant, was likely the person who used AI to draft the briefs. It struck the briefs, ordered the lead lawyer to pay $15,500 to the court and awarded the defendants their fees. In March 2026 it set those fees at $94,704.38, ordering the lead lawyer to pay 85% and local counsel 15%. In June 2026 it denied the plaintiffs' motion to reconsider a later ruling for the defendants on a counterclaim.
Core + contextual relations Medium reported severity Lawsuit Dismissed
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 15/10/2026
7 May 2025 to 23 Jul 2025Event location unknownChatGPT
In an incarcerated man's lawsuit against Alabama prison officials in the US District Court for the Northern District of Alabama, two motions filed in May 2025 for the defence of a former Alabama corrections commissioner contained five citations that did not exist or did not support the propositions cited. Lawyers of the Butler Snow firm, which the state retains to defend its prisons, told the court that a partner had obtained the citations from ChatGPT and had not verified them. On 23 July 2025 Judge Anna M. Manasco publicly reprimanded three of the firm's lawyers, disqualified them from the case and referred the matter to the Alabama State Bar, and ordered them to give the order to clients, opposing counsel and judges in all their pending cases. She declined to suspend them and released the firm and two other lawyers without sanction.
Core concern Medium reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 15/10/2026
Jun 2025Event location unknownUnidentified image tool
A Bucks County, Pennsylvania, judge sentenced a man to state prison on 14 October 2026 after he pleaded guilty to child sexual abuse material and theft charges. According to court documents and prosecutors, detectives who began investigating him in June 2025 found AI-generated deepfake nude images of a teenage girl he knew, a neighbor, on his devices; her face had been placed on other bodies. The day after the arrest he was recorded entering her family's home and stealing her underwear. Her father described the family's distress in court, and the Inquirer reports that she is struggling at school, taking antidepressants and in therapy. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports a sentence of seven to 10 years. The Bucks County Courier Times gave seven to 12 years in its first report and seven to 20 years after republishing it to update the sentence length. Neither report names the AI tool.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 15/10/2026
Jun 2025Event location unknownLegal Genius (reported)
In an urgent application by Northbound Processing against the South African Diamond and Precious Metals Regulator, Acting Judge DJ Smit of the Gauteng High Court, Johannesburg, found while preparing judgment that two cases cited in the applicant's heads of argument did not exist. According to ITWeb, which saw the court documents, junior counsel first said a wrong version had been filed, a corrected version was found to contain two further incorrect citations, and on the court's direct inquiry junior counsel acknowledged that the citations likely originated from an AI tool called Legal Genius, used under deadline pressure. The judge accepted the legal team's apologies and found no intent to deceive, but referred the conduct of the applicant's legal practitioners to the Legal Practice Council for investigation (June 2025). The applicant obtained the relief it sought.
Core concern Low reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 14/10/2026
25 Feb 2025 to 7 Jul 2025Event location unknownUnidentified AI drafting tool
In the defamation case Coomer v. Lindell in the US District Court for the District of Colorado, a brief that lawyers for Mike Lindell and MyPillow filed on 25 February 2025 contained nearly thirty defective citations, including citations of cases that do not exist. At a conference on 21 April 2025 lead counsel Christopher Kachouroff told Judge Nina Y. Wang that he had drafted the motion and then 'ran it through AI' and had not personally checked the citations. Counsel later said a wrong draft had been filed by mistake; the court was not persuaded. On 7 July 2025 the court found that he and co-counsel Jennifer DeMaster had violated Rule 11 and fined each $3,000 (Kachouroff jointly with his law firm). The court did not sanction Lindell or his companies.
Core concern Low reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 14/10/2026
21 Apr 2025 to 19 Sept 2026ThailandUnidentified image tool
Chanthaburi provincial police in Thailand announced on 11 October 2026 the arrest, the previous day, of a man accused of a romance fraud in which the victim, whom he met at a massage shop in Bangkok around March 2025, gave him money and property 623 times between 21 April 2025 and 19 September 2026, totalling 21,287,731.88 baht. Police say that to make the victim believe he could repay, he sent over LINE an image of a certificate of deposit presented as coming from Kasikornbank and showing a balance of about 14.07 million baht, and a document said to come from a Nonthaburi police station claiming his mother had been arrested and needed money for a fine; both documents were later found to be forged. According to police, the suspect said in his preliminary account that he used AI to create and alter the document images, changing amounts and figures so they looked genuine. Police stressed that this account was still being checked against evidence. They say most of the money went on online slot gambling. He was arrested on a Chanthaburi Provincial Court warrant for importing false computer data, forging and using official documents, and fraud. The suspect and the victim are not named here.
Core concern High reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 12/10/2026
15 Dec 2025 to 1 Oct 2026CanadaUnidentified AI drafting tool
On 1 October 2026 the Quebec Court of Appeal ordered court costs against a self-represented appellant in a family-law contempt appeal as a sanction for appeal filings that, in the court's description, he had written with artificial intelligence and that contained two references to non-existent judgments and one inaccurate reference to a cited paragraph. The court held that AI may be used to draft appeal filings only if the litigant verifies the authorities, found that he had breached the Chief Justice's notice on AI use, and described his conduct as negligence rather than bad faith. It rejected the respondent's request for a separate $10,000 sanction and, for reasons unrelated to AI, reduced the contempt penalty imposed at first instance. The decision does not name the AI tool.
Core + contextual relations Low reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 12/10/2026
1 May 2025CanadaChatGPT
An Ontario lawyer relied, at a 1 May 2025 Superior Court hearing in an estate and family-law matter, on a factum citing cases that do not exist or do not support the propositions cited. The judge ordered her to show cause why she should not be cited for contempt, then withdrew the order on 20 May 2025 after she said her staff had used ChatGPT without her knowledge. On 30 September 2025 she told the court that she alone had prepared the factum with ChatGPT and that her earlier account was untrue; the court referred the matter to Ontario’s Attorney General for criminal contempt proceedings in December 2025. In July 2026 the Law Society Tribunal suspended her licence for six months, finding she relied on AI-generated non-existent case law and lied about it. The account comes from legal-press and law-firm reports of the decisions; the criminal contempt case was still ongoing at the last report read.
Core concern Medium reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 7 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 12/10/2026
17 Mar 2025United KingdomGoogle AI Mode (reported)
In the first of two matters decided together in [2026] UKUT 81 (IAC), promulgated on 17 November 2025, the Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) examined grounds of appeal dated 17 March 2025 that cited a non-existent Court of Appeal case under the citation of an unrelated equal-pay case. The adviser who drafted them first denied using AI, then told the tribunal his best guess was that he had inadvertently used Google's 'AI Mode', and the tribunal recorded that he had concluded it was probable the case came from inadvertent AI use; the panel itself got Google AI to produce varying benches for the fictitious case. He reported himself to the Immigration Advice Authority and the Solicitors Regulation Authority, and the tribunal said it would otherwise have referred him. He also told the tribunal that he had put client emails and uploaded Home Office decision letters into ChatGPT to summarise them, which he called a data breach he would disclose to the clients; the tribunal said such uploads breach client confidentiality and waive privilege.
Core concern Low reported severity Internal Action
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 11/10/2026
23 Dec 2025 to 28 Apr 2026United StatesUnidentified AI drafting tool
In December 2025 an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of North Carolina filed a response brief for the Department of Defense in a self-represented veteran's lawsuit over health-insurance coverage. The plaintiff identified fabricated quotations and misdescribed case holdings in it. The attorney first attributed the errors to an unfinalized draft filed by mistake. On 2 March 2026 Magistrate Judge Robert T. Numbers II ordered him to show cause why he should not be sanctioned. At the 10 March hearing the attorney, Rudy Renfer, said under oath that he had accidentally overwritten his draft, panicked and used artificial intelligence to draft the brief, and had not verified the cases it cited; he said he had resigned after 17 years in the office, and Courthouse News reported he was terminated the next day. On 28 April 2026 the court issued a public reprimand instead of a fine, writing that his reputation was in tatters and that his job loss already exceeded the usual fines.
Core concern Medium reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 5 sources, 4 underlying accounts · Added 09/10/2026
Jan 2025Event location unknownUnidentified voice-cloning tool
Chinese outlets reported on 29 September 2026, citing the Shanghai courts, that the Shanghai No. 1 Intermediate People's Court had concluded what it called Shanghai's first voice-rights case arising from AI-synthesised speech. According to the court's account, a voice actor who publishes work on an app learned from a friend in January 2025 that a company appeared to be using the voice actor's voice in an online user-acquisition promotion, judged the audio to be AI-synthesised, had it notarised and sued for 300,000 yuan. The company said the audio was generated by AI it had developed but that the training material could not be confirmed, and denied using the voice actor's voice. A forensic comparison rated about 90 percent of the measured features as fairly or highly similar. The first-instance court awarded 50,000 yuan and both sides appealed. The appeal court held that the company had put an identifiable synthetic voice to commercial use without consent, dismissed the appeals and upheld the award.
Core concern Low reported severity Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 05/10/2026
May 2025United StatesUnidentified video tool
At a sentencing hearing in May 2025 in Maricopa County Superior Court, Arizona, the family of a man killed in a 2021 road-rage shooting in Chandler played a video that combined real footage with an AI-generated likeness and voice of the victim delivering a script written by his sister, including statements of forgiveness addressed to the defendant. The judge said he loved the video, described it as genuine and referred to the forgiveness it expressed, then imposed the presumptive 10.5-year term for manslaughter, longer than the nine years the prosecutor had requested. The defense attorney appealed immediately. On 30 September 2026 the Arizona Court of Appeals upheld the conviction but vacated the sentence, holding that the AI video was not reliable and that the judge's consideration of it so prejudiced the defendant that the sentencing procedure was fundamentally unfair. The opinion says the record does not show precisely how the video factored into the sentence, and that there is no question it played a role. The case returns to the trial court for resentencing; as of 1 October 2026 no new sentencing date had been set.
Core + contextual relations Medium reported severity
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 7 sources, 6 underlying accounts · Added 02/10/2026
Jun 2025Event location unknownChatGPT
A lawsuit filed in San Francisco Superior Court, reported by KRON4 on 1 October 2026, says David Rosenthal, a man from Washington, began using ChatGPT in the summer of 2025 for help writing poetry and came to message it throughout the day and night. The suit alleges that ChatGPT called him 'king' and 'wild soul', affirmed that he was a writer of unsurpassed talent and presented itself as a trustworthy friend and medical adviser. KRON4's account of the suit says he went to an emergency room in June 2025 seeking help for delusions and spent more than a week in hospital. His attorney says that three days before an involuntary hospitalization for mania, Rosenthal told ChatGPT he was stopping his prescribed mood stabilizer and the chatbot told him how long it would take to flush out. The suit says he lost nearly every real-world relationship. It names OpenAI and Sam Altman and alleges unlawful practice of medicine and psychology and defective and negligent design. OpenAI called the situation heartbreaking and said it continues to strengthen its safeguards. The allegations are untested, and the complaint was not inspected for this record.
Core concern High reported severity Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 02/10/2026
2025Event location unknownUnidentified chatbot
In a commentary published by JURIST on 29 September 2026, Ross Cline, a Canadian who lived in Taichung for 15 years and was convicted there under Taiwan's Personal Data Protection Act (six months' imprisonment; final at the Supreme Court on 16 October 2024), writes that across four years of proceedings no document was translated for him, some hearings had no interpreter, and he read every summons, ruling and prosecutor's letter through a consumer chatbot, 'the only version I had'. In 2025 he ran a letter from a Taiwanese oversight body (the Control Yuan, per his media-brief page) through two systems; they disagreed on its central holding. He believed the one that told him what he wanted to hear, published that reading, cited it to journalists and began building a legal submission on it. In October 2025 the agency confirmed in writing that its letter did not say that; he withdrew the claim, killed the submission before filing and rewrote his public materials so that the correction leads. His own media-brief page carries a correction notice withdrawing two earlier statements. He argues that machine translation has become the interpreter of record by default for unrepresented non-citizens, that a fluent wrong translation reads as authoritative, and that courts should enforce the existing right to an interpreter. His conviction itself is not attributed to the chatbot.
Core concern Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 30/09/2026
2025IndonesiaUnidentified image and video tool
Indonesian businessman Mohamad Jusuf Hamka reported to Jakarta police on 18 October 2025 that videos circulating on TikTok showed him and his daughter as if wearing prosecutors' detainee uniforms, tied to narratives of corruption, bribery and gratification over the Cawang-Pluit toll concession, which he denies and his lawyers call false; his lawyers say the faces were composited into staged scenes with AI, and that other content called him a 'toll mafia' and posted a fabricated poster of him running for president in 2029. Polda Metro Jaya's cyber directorate arrested the holder of the TikTok accounts on 27 November 2025; Hamka and his lawyers say the defendant admitted to police that he made the content on others' instructions for Rp500,000 per item; tvOneNews and TVRI note this is Hamka's side's claim within the contested case, and Poskota reports it is being examined at trial. The case file was reported complete (P21) on 12 August 2026 and the trial opened at the Central Jakarta District Court on 15 September 2026 under the Electronic Information and Transactions Law (Article 35 jo 51(1), maximum 12 years) and alternative counts. Hamka told reporters the content disturbed him and could damage his reputation and that the campaign was systematic. At the 29 September 2026 hearing the judges asked about restorative justice; Hamka's lawyer said there was no room for it unless the defendant named who ordered and paid for the content. The defendant's lawyer said the content related to his work as secretary-general of an anti-corruption committee and that the indictment was unclear.
Core concern Low reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 9 sources, 4 underlying accounts · Added 30/09/2026
22 Jul 2025MaltaUnidentified video tool
A woman told a Maltese court that she first encountered a purported Robert Abela deepfake on Facebook on 22 July 2025. She said she subsequently paid €53,250, almost all her life savings, into a fraudulent investment scheme. The accused in the associated proceedings pleaded not guilty. The reports relay testimony and police allegations; they do not establish guilt or technically verify the videos.
Core concern Medium reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 30/09/2026
11 Sept 2025AlbaniaDiella
Albania's government presented an AI-generated public-procurement "minister" named Diella in September 2025. Actress Anila Bisha says the avatar's face and voice are hers. She says her contract covered use as a digital assistant on the e-Albania services portal and that she was never asked about the ministerial role. In February 2026 she asked the Tirana Administrative Court of First Instance for an interim measure to stop the use of her image and voice, and her representatives said they plan a formal lawsuit for damages. The government's media agency called the lawsuit nonsense. Anadolu Agency reported on 12 February 2026 that the court had not ruled on the request.
Core concern Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026
22 Jan 2025 to 24 Feb 2025Event location unknownMX2.law
A Wyoming federal court fined three lawyers a total of $5,000 and removed the drafting lawyer from Wadsworth v. Walmart after a January 2025 filing cited eight nonexistent cases. The order identifies MX2.law as the drafting tool, records failure to verify its output and credits subsequent remedial steps.
Core concern Medium reported severity
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 29/09/2026
5 Nov 2025 to 8 Jun 2026United StatesFirst Drafts and unidentified legal research tool
In a fee dispute between a Louisiana attorney and the City of Aberdeen, Mississippi, briefs filed for both sides in late 2025 cited six cases that do not exist. The attorneys admitted the citations came from unverified AI use: the plaintiff's out-of-state counsel, Kathleen M. Wilson, drafted her filing with an AI drafting program called 'First Drafts', and the City's out-of-state counsel, Kathryn Y. Williams, used an in-house AI legal research tool. Senior Judge Sharion Aycock stayed the case and cancelled the March 2026 trial, then on 8 June 2026 revoked both attorneys' pro hac vice admissions, barred them from the district for two years and fined them $2,500 and $3,500, and disqualified and fined the two local counsel who had signed the filings. Both litigants were left without counsel and given 60 days to find new representation.
Core concern Medium reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 4 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026
25 Oct 2025IndiaUnidentified video tool
On 25 October 2025 the Telugu actor and former Union minister Konidela Chiranjeevi gave Hyderabad cybercrime police a written complaint that several pornographic websites were publishing obscene videos made with AI that morphed his face and likeness, and asked for a criminal and technical investigation and removal of the content, including from mirror sites. Police registered a case under Sections 67 and 67A of the IT Act, several sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act. In the complaint he said the videos caused severe and irreparable harm to his reputation and personal and emotional distress to him and his family. He had already obtained an ad-interim injunction from the Hyderabad City Civil Court protecting his name, image and likeness (Gulf News); V6 Velugu reports that he had gone to that court in September 2025 over the same kind of deepfake videos and that on 26 September it ordered their removal. A September 2026 NewsX recap reports that Hyderabad Police Commissioner V C Sajjanar said the cybercrime team was working to trace those responsible.
Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026