1 Oct 2024 to 28 Feb 2025AustraliaUnidentified image and video tool
William Hamish Yeates, then 18, of Netherby in Adelaide, created sexually explicit deepfake images and videos of a teenage girl with whom, his counsel said, he had developed an obsession (The Sun describes her as a former friend), using her school graduation photograph, and shared them across multiple accounts on X between October 2024 and February 2025. Appearing in court in February 2026 charged with eight counts of creating or altering sexual material without consent and 12 counts of using a carriage service in a harassing or offensive way, he became the first person in Australia prosecuted under the Commonwealth offence introduced in 2024 against adult deepfake pornography; in April 2026 he pleaded guilty to two counts of creating or altering sexual material without consent (October 2024 to February 2025) and two of the carriage-service offence, and the remaining counts were withdrawn. At a pre-sentence hearing in the South Australian District Court on 22 September 2026 the victim, now 19, told the court that the first time she saw her actual graduation picture was on a pornography website beside altered videos of her with her full name and school attached, that she feels sick whenever she sees the photo, that the discovery led to the darkest period of her life, and that although the images were fake their impact was painfully real. Yeates read an apology; his counsel cited diagnoses of autism spectrum disorder and compulsive sexual behaviour disorder and asked for no custody; the Commonwealth prosecutor sought imprisonment. Sentencing is listed for 22 October 2026.
Core concern High reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 5 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 23/09/2026
19 Mar 2024 to 19 Sept 2026NetherlandsUnidentified video tool
In March 2024 the newspaper AD revealed that a large number of Dutch women in public life, including artists, television presenters, Olympic athletes, current and former ministers, mayors and members of the royal family, appeared in manipulated pornographic videos on an online platform with 13 million monthly visitors, later identified as MrDeepFakes. Dozens of women filed police complaints and several spoke publicly: one presenter said she was preparing a complaint, a party leader said the video felt like 'digital rape', another presenter said she would file a complaint 'because tomorrow it could happen to young girls of sixteen', a presenter-entrepreneur did so 'to prevent new, young victims', and a member of parliament, told of a video by the House security service, went public rather than 'keep it small'. On 19 and 20 September 2026 AD, and the Public Prosecution Service (OM) confirming to NOS, reported that after more than a year of investigation the OM will prosecute a 74-year-old man from Noord-Holland, who is not in custody, for making the videos (Hart van Nederland, citing AD, says he is suspected of making and distributing them); images of about sixty well-known Dutch people and politicians were found on his devices, AD reported that he had been the platform's most active Dutch user, and he faces up to two years' imprisonment. The platform's Canadian operator, who removed material at the OM's request and blocked Dutch IP addresses before the site went offline, will not be prosecuted. One of the presenters reported to be among the depicted told AD she was relieved the case would go to court, having experienced the impact of such images herself. No hearing date has been set.
Core concern High reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 5 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 21/09/2026
1 Oct 2024SwitzerlandChatGPT
At midday on 1 October 2024 a Chinese master's student, then 23, attacked a group of five-year-old kindergarten children walking with a daycare worker to their after-school Hort near Berninaplatz in Zurich-Oerlikon with a kitchen knife. Two boys suffered life-threatening neck and chest wounds (one had the jugular vein severed, one the pericardium and aorta cut); a third was wounded in the ear and the shoulder or lung. The daycare worker held the attacker's arms until he dropped the knife. The indictment and the court's oral reasoning, as reported by NZZ, Keystone-SDA/ATS and CH Media, describe weeks of preparation from summer 2024: he discussed ways of killing and their legal consequences with ChatGPT, studied anatomy, bought raw beef to practise stabbing, and used ChatGPT to find out where and when children could be encountered in Zurich. No source quotes the prompts or ChatGPT's replies. On 18 September 2026 the Zurich District Court convicted him of multiple attempted murder and imposed 15 years' imprisonment, treatment during custody, a 15-year expulsion from Switzerland and CHF 106,000 in moral damages to the three boys; it accepted that he was psychotic but found diminished, not absent, criminal responsibility. His lawyer announced an appeal. The parents of one boy described nightmares, self-blame and scars 23 months on.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution unclear · 7 sources, 5 underlying accounts · Added 19/09/2026
Aug 2024South KoreaUnidentified image tool
On 16 September 2026 the Incheon District Court sentenced a teenage defendant to an indeterminate term of two years (maximum) to one year six months (minimum) under the Sexual Violence Punishment Act for making and distributing false sexual images, ordered a 40-hour treatment programme and a five-year ban on working with children, and took him into custody in court. As a middle-school student in Incheon in 2024 he had used AI deepfake technology to composite the faces of five teachers, including his homeroom teacher whom he tricked into sending photographs, and six female middle- and high-school students from his taekwondo academy onto nude images and videos, 35 productions in all, and distributed them in Telegram 'acquaintance humiliation' chat rooms with the victims' real names, ages, schools, subjects and, per two reports, phone numbers (Hankook Ilbo adds Instagram IDs on some). The teachers learned of the images only in January 2026; the court said they are receiving long-term psychological treatment. He had withdrawn from school a week before the teachers'-rights committee met, avoiding school discipline. The Incheon teachers' union called the sentence, below the prosecution's request, regrettable.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 5 sources · Added 16/09/2026