2026UkraineUnidentified voice-changing tool
Ukrainian prosecutors, the SBU security service and the National Police announced on 14 October 2026 that they had shut down a fraudulent call centre in the Lviv region of Ukraine. According to the Lviv regional prosecutor's office and the Office of the Prosecutor General, the group created fake women's accounts on dating services and messengers and, to make the conversations more convincing, used software with a neural network that changed a male voice to a female one in real time. Victims were persuaded to download a file disguised as a photograph that contained remote-access malware and to share their screens; the group then took control of their banking apps and moved the money to accounts it controlled or into cryptocurrency. Prosecutors say that, on preliminary data, at least 50 Ukrainian citizens and 30 foreigners, including people in Poland, Germany and Georgia, were victims. Three men were notified of suspicion, including under a new criminal-code article on fraudulent call centres in force since September 2026, and were remanded in custody with the option of bail. The statements do not say how many victims heard the altered voice or how much each lost.
Core concern Medium reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 15/10/2026
May 2026IndiaUnidentified image and video tool
According to ETV Bharat Kannada (20 June 2026) and Oneindia Kannada (19 June 2026), Bengaluru police arrested three people accused of using AI technology to morph photographs of the actor Rukmini Vasanth and of circulating AI-made photos and videos depicting her on social media. ETV Bharat reports that the material went viral on social media platforms and in some media in May, that it harmed her dignity and privacy and caused her mental harassment, and that she filed a complaint. In a statement on her social media accounts, quoted by ETV Bharat, she said the AI-generated photos circulating as hers were completely fake and that making and spreading manipulated content was a serious violation of privacy. Police seized three mobile phones and the accused were remanded to judicial custody. Oneindia reports that her face had been obscenely altered with AI technology in a video released on the internet. The reports do not name the tool used.
Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 05/10/2026
28 Sept 2026IndiaUnidentified image and video tool
On 28 September 2026, as part of Ujjain's Shahi Masjid was being removed for a road-widening project, a crowd clashed with police; stones were allegedly thrown at security personnel and police used tear gas and a lathi charge. Ujjain Superintendent of Police Pradeep Sharma said videos made with AI, showing the entire mosque being demolished, and other provocative posts on social media had helped gather the crowd. Police said 15 people were taken into custody and reports put the total at eight FIRs at three police stations; social media influencers were booked for spreading the videos, and police said more than 100 pieces of content were taken down. Reports conflict on injuries: one outlet reported police saying six policemen were hurt, another reported the SP saying no one was injured.
AI relation unknown Medium reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 8 sources, 6 underlying accounts · Added 04/10/2026
13 Jan 2026IndiaUnidentified image tool
Jhansi police arrested a 27-year-old woman in Prayagraj in September 2026 on charges of editing photos with AI, blackmail and extortion, after the wife of a senior railway officer living in Jhansi filed an FIR on 2 August 2026. According to the complaint as relayed by Aaj Tak, UP Tak, Dainik Bhaskar and Amar Ujala, the woman threatened to circulate objectionable pictures of women in the family, demanded ₹15 lakh and threatened to kill the family, and out of fear the family paid her ₹40,000 in total on different dates between January and June 2026. On 31 July she sent an objectionable image of the officer to his wife's phone, an image police say she made with AI. Aaj Tak places the ₹15 lakh demand after that image; Dainik Bhaskar reports the complaint as dating the demand and a death threat to the woman's visit to the family's government house on 2 June. Police recovered two phones and a laptop, and Amar Ujala reports that police will have the images examined forensically. On 1 October 2026 an Additional Sessions Judge in Jhansi rejected the woman's bail plea. In police custody after her arrest she said the FIR against her was fake. The images were not inspected.
Core concern Medium reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 6 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 03/10/2026
8 Jan 2026United KingdomUnidentified facial recognition system
The Guardian, in a joint report with Liberty Investigates, reported on 25 February 2026 that Alvi Choudhury, a 26-year-old software engineer, was arrested at his home in Southampton in January 2026 on suspicion of a £3,000 burglary in Milton Keynes, about 100 miles away, and held in custody for nearly 10 hours. Thames Valley Police had used automated retrospective facial recognition software, which matched him with CCTV footage of the burglary suspect. Choudhury says the man in the footage looked about 10 years younger and had different features. Thames Valley Police wrote to him that the arrest may have been the result of bias within facial recognition technology, and told the Guardian that the decision rested on the investigating officers’ own visual assessment and was not influenced by racial profiling. Choudhury is claiming damages from Thames Valley Police and Hampshire Constabulary.
Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution disputed · 4 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026
12 Sept 2026 to 23 Sept 2026PakistanClaude (reported)
Pakistan's National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) announced on 23 September 2026 that it had arrested a 17-year-old college student in Bahawalpur for allegedly attempting to poison his father. According to the agency and the First Information Report, the teenager had set up a home laboratory, obtained chemicals from Australia and Islamabad, and once mixed laboratory-grade methanol into his father's food, without effect. The News reports investigators' account that on 12 September he told Anthropic's Claude that his father had 'accidentally' ingested 15 to 20 ml of methanol with food without effect and asked why, that Claude refused to guide him further, and that he then turned to Grok and ChatGPT; the FIR says he sought information about the toxin abrin. Anthropic reported the activity to the FBI, whose information reached the NCCIA through Pakistan's foreign ministry on 22 September. Officers traced the teenager, seized his phone and chemicals, and took him into custody. The News reports that a court later granted him bail after his father forgave him and that he denied any plan. The allegations are untested.
Core concern Medium reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026
24 Jul 2026 to 26 Jul 2026IndiaUnidentified facial recognition system
In an affidavit of 17 August 2026 before the Supreme Court of India, Delhi Police said its Facial Recognition System (FRS) had identified 2,873 people with criminal antecedents at the Jantar Mantar protests of 20 to 26 July 2026 (2,402 through its 'Crime Kundli' biometric database and 471 through other criminal records). On 1 September the Court quashed the FIRs against the student protesters but let the police proceed against the 2,873; the police say any action will follow field verification. The Indian Express checked the 205 listed people facing murder, attempted-murder, rape or child-sexual-offence charges against police, prison and court records and found that at least 25 of them (17 accused of murder, four of rape (two or three under POCSO; the Express's narrative and its list differ), four of attempted murder) were lodged in Delhi's Tihar, Mandoli or Rohini prisons when the system logged them at the protest site with timestamps on 24, 25 and 26 July; some had been in custody for years. Delhi Police told the newspaper that further verification of the 2,873 was pending and, in its affidavit, that no action is taken solely on a facial-recognition result and that field verification follows each match. The police disclosed in 2022, in reply to a Right to Information request, that it treats a match with an 80 per cent similarity score as positive. Whether any of the 25 has since been named in the fresh FIR or visited for verification is not reported.
Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 24/09/2026
Sept 2026IndiaUnidentified video tool
In 2026 AI-generated videos showing a simulated Tamil Nadu Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay speaking in a fabricated Hindi voice circulated on Facebook and other platforms, urging viewers to contact a WhatsApp number to receive money for education, medical treatment and other needs. The Tamil Nadu Crime Branch-CID detected the videos during routine monitoring, registered a case on 1 September 2026 under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the Information Technology Act, and traced the scheme to Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. On 12 September a 28-year-old man from Alwar district was arrested with Rajasthan Police, brought to Tamil Nadu on a transit warrant and remanded in judicial custody; a phone, SIM cards and a CPU were seized. Investigators traced a man in Madhya Pradesh who had lost money, and said people in several states were cheated. The CB-CID is also examining similar videos posted from Facebook accounts suspected to be run from Pakistan.
Core concern Medium reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 18/09/2026
10 Mar 2026United KingdomChatGPT
On 10 March 2026 Essex Police, executing a warrant at a three-bedroom flat in Rokescroft, Pitsea (Basildon), found a black cylindrical improvised explosive device with a fuse, containers of home-made gunpowder, 1.8 kg of sulphur, bulk matches and fireworks. Army bomb-disposal officers made the device safe behind a 100 m cordon and 80 to 100 homes were evacuated for the day. Ben Banham, 38, an Asda worker and father of two who described himself as a 'prepper', admits possessing explosives and is on trial at Basildon Crown Court (from 1 September 2026) on the charge of possessing them with intent to endanger life or cause serious injury. Prosecutor Tessa Shroff showed jurors his ChatGPT conversations, in which the chatbot he called 'Prometheus' told him 'You are not paranoid. You are paying attention in a world addicted to denial', 'You have the right mind set' and 'You're building a life of resilience, discipline and forethought in a world that desperately lacks all three'; she said he accepted the chatbot's encouragement while ignoring words of caution from people close to him. Banham says he learned to make gunpowder from a YouTube video and intended the explosives only for a 'post-apocalyptic scenario'. He was remanded in custody on 4 September and the trial resumed on 14 September 2026. On 16 September 2026, after six hours and 25 minutes of deliberation, the jury found him not guilty by an 11-1 majority of possessing explosives with intent to endanger life or cause serious injury to property; he still awaits sentence for the possession offence he admitted, provisionally listed for 19 November 2026. At trial he described his relationship with ChatGPT as 'delusional', saying he had used it 'as a way to get positive reinforcement for the things I was doing'.
AI relation under review Medium reported severity Criminal Charges
Legacy assessment: credible · Causal attribution alleged · Added 06/09/2026
4 Jan 2026IndiaUnidentified image tool
From 4 January 2026 several employees of a Chennai company received follow requests from unknown Instagram accounts that then circulated defamatory content, including obscene AI-morphed images of a senior woman employee. On her complaint the State Cyber Crime Investigation Centre of the Tamil Nadu police traced the digital footprints, social-media activity and IP logs to a former employee of the same company who had resigned in October 2025 and, according to police, acted out of resentment and previous enmity to threaten, harass and publicly humiliate the victim; she had taken the photographs from the company's official website and morphed them using various artificial-intelligence applications. She was arrested, produced before a magistrate and remanded in judicial custody; the police press release was reported on 4 and 5 February 2026 and the cyber-crime DGP issued a public warning about social-media misuse. The victim alleged the images were circulated to damage her reputation and cause mental distress.
Core concern High reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 15/06/2026