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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
8
Countries with reported events
5
Located 6 of 8 cases · 2 unknown
Languages in checked sources
5
Recorded for 8 of 8 cases

3 cases have no reviewed AI-to-person relation yet: 0 not yet reviewed and 3 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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8 of 896 published cases

13 Apr 2024BrazilUnidentified facial recognition system

Aracaju (Brazil): facial recognition falsely matched a football fan to a wanted man; police led him from the stands and the state suspended the system

During the half-time interval of the Sergipe state football championship final at the Batistão stadium in Aracaju on 13 April 2024, military police took a personal trainer from the stands to a police room after the stadium's facial recognition system flagged him as a man with an open arrest warrant; he was searched and questioned and released once police confirmed he was not the person sought (G1, his lawyer and the military police). Sergipe's governor publicly regretted 'the failure of the facial recognition tool' and suspended its use until a new protocol was adopted. In June 2024 the man sued the state for 550,000 reais in moral damages; the state argued that the Aracaju municipality, not the state, had contracted the system. In December 2025 the judge rejected that preliminary objection, according to Mangue Jornalismo, which read the court file. No final judgment is reported.

Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 24/10/2026

7 Jun 2024NetherlandsChatGPT

Dutch sub-district judge used ChatGPT to estimate solar-panel lifespan and power prices in a neighbour dispute, then rejected the homeowner's damages claim

A homeowner in the Netherlands sued his neighbour, whose permitted roof extension shaded his solar panels, claiming more than 21,000 euros for lost yield and investment. In a judgment of 7 June 2024 (ECLI:NL:RBGEL:2024:3636), the sub-district judge of the Rechtbank Gelderland, sitting in Nijmegen, held that the neighbour had to bear half of the damage and then calculated the damage, estimating the average lifespan of solar panels from 2009 and the current average electricity price partly with the help of ChatGPT, as the judgment states. Using a lifespan of 27.5 years, about 15 remaining years and a price of 0.30 euros per kWh, the judge put the yield loss at about 2,250 euros and the maximum damage at 3,323.40 euros; half of that was less than the 3,300 euros the neighbour had offered, so the claim was rejected and the homeowner, who had refused the offer, received nothing and was ordered to pay costs. On the neighbour's counterclaim, the judge assumed, again partly with ChatGPT, that insulation material the homeowner had thrown into water was no longer usable, and ordered him to pay damages of 2,619.02 euros in total. The judgment does not say what was asked or answered, and whether it was appealed is not reported.

Contextual tracker case Low reported severity Lawsuit Dismissed

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 24/10/2026

30 Sept 2024Event location unknownBaidu AI smart answer

Nanjing courts rule Baidu's AI search answer falsely saying a lawyer was sentenced to prison defamed him; written apology ordered and upheld on appeal

A practising lawyer in Nanjing, China, found in September 2024 that Baidu search's 'AI smart answer' (AI 智能回答) feature, asked how many years he had been sentenced to, answered that he had been sentenced to three years in prison for a criminal offence and showed his photograph in a lawyer's robe. According to the first-instance judgment as quoted in the press, the answer was produced on 30 September 2024. The lawyer says he complained repeatedly to Baidu by letter, hotline and email without the content being fully removed, and he sued. The Jiangbei New Area People's Court in Nanjing found that Baidu had combined text and his picture through AI into false, disparaging content aimed at him, that Baidu was at fault, and that this was defamation; it ordered a written apology and rejected his claims for lost income and emotional damages for lack of evidence. Baidu argued that AI hallucinations could not be foreseen. The Nanjing Intermediate People's Court dismissed Baidu's appeal on 12 March 2026. The lawyer applied for enforcement when no apology came, and in September 2026 said he had received Baidu's written apology; Baidu has applied for a retrial.

Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 22/10/2026

Jul 2025United StatesAbridge (reported)

Class action alleges San Diego health system Sharp's Abridge AI scribe recorded a patient's exam-room visit without consent and charted false consent

A proposed class action filed in San Diego Superior Court in late 2025 alleges that Sharp HealthCare, which began using the AI documentation app Abridge in April 2025, recorded doctor-patient conversations without telling patients, sent the audio to the vendor's servers and used it to generate draft medical notes. According to the lawsuit as reported by KPBS, the named plaintiff discovered that a July appointment at a Sharp clinic had been recorded only when he read his medical notes; the clinic apologised, acknowledged the recording and told him the file could stay on the vendor's servers for about a month. The complaint also alleges that Abridge inserted statements into charts that patients had been advised of the recording and had consented, when the plaintiff says that never happened. It seeks damages, corrected medical records and an order against using the tool without consent, and estimates that more than 100,000 patients may have been recorded. Sharp told reporters it could not comment on pending litigation. The allegations have not been tested in court in the sources read.

Contextual tracker case Low reported severity Lawsuit Filed

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 17/10/2026

23 Jul 2023United StatesFlock Safety license plate readers

Police in New Mexico handcuffed two sisters, one a child, after a Flock plate camera misread a digit and flagged their car as stolen, lawsuits say; settled 2025

On 23 July 2023 Española police officers pulled over a car driven by a 21-year-old woman with her 12-year-old sister as a passenger, after a Flock Safety camera at an intersection flagged the car's plate as belonging to a vehicle stolen in Rio Rancho. According to the sisters' lawsuits, reported by the Santa Fe New Mexican in January 2024, the camera had read a 2 on the plate as a 7, and officers handcuffed both sisters and placed them in the backs of separate police vehicles before discovering the error; the older sister had asked an officer to call their mother, who lived nearby, to collect the girl. The suits sought damages for anxiety, fear, worry and restriction of movement. Business Insider, which reviewed the body-camera footage and incident report, reported in March 2026 that officers said the number was obscured by a license plate cover although it is visible in the footage, and that the family settled with the city in 2025.

Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Involving minors Lawsuit Settled

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources · Added 04/10/2026

8 Jan 2026United KingdomUnidentified facial recognition system

Southampton: Alvi Choudhury arrested at home on suspicion of a Milton Keynes burglary after a police retrospective facial recognition match, held nearly 10 hours, claiming damages

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

Apr 2025Event location unknownGoogle AI Overviews

Google AI Overview reportedly states that an orthopedic surgeon in Negrar is dead after a homonym's death

Italian outlets report that Google's AI Overview feature told searchers that Claudio Zorzi, head of orthopedics and traumatology at the IRCCS Sacro Cuore Don Calabria hospital in Negrar (Verona), had died. According to the hospital, the surgeon is alive and operating, and the error probably came from confusion with a general practitioner of the same name who died. The false news is reported to have circulated since April 2025 and to have recurred. Zorzi said he felt uncomfortable because people who think he is dead do not look for him, and he reported the notice to the postal police. On 15 October 2025 the hospital served Google, through its lawyers, with a formal cease-and-desist and default notice and reserved a damages claim. No Google response was found. The AI Overview output itself was not inspected.

Contextual tracker case Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026

Dec 2025CanadaGoogle AI Overviews

Google AI Overview reportedly described fiddler Ashley MacIsaac as a convicted sex offender, and a concert was cancelled

In December 2025 Cape Breton fiddler Ashley MacIsaac said a First Nation north of Halifax cancelled his concert planned for 19 December after reading a Google AI-generated search summary that said he had convictions for sexual offences. He says the statements were false and came from online articles about another man in Atlantic Canada with the same last name. The First Nation apologised in writing and Google amended the search results. MacIsaac says he feared for his safety and worries about other lost work. In a statement of claim filed in February 2026 in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice he seeks damages of 1.5 million from Google (US dollars in the Globe and Mail copy of the Canadian Press story, no currency stated in the CBC copy). None of its claims has been tested in court, and the claim says Google did not admit responsibility.

Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026

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: 24/10/2026. Dataset available under CC BY 4.0.