29 Oct 2026TaiwanUnidentified voice-cloning tool
A recording that imitated the voice of Puma Shen (Shen Po-yang), the Democratic Progressive Party's candidate for mayor of Taipei, appeared on Threads late on 29 October 2026 under a caption calling it a suspected private recording; in it the voice admitted taking kickbacks from US arms purchases. Taiwan's Investigation Bureau said its forensic check confirmed the audio as deepfake content, and Taoyuan prosecutors said a man had made the clip with a highly realistic imitation of Shen's voice and spread it on social media. Prosecutors arrested him on 30 October, seized his phone and sought his detention for spreading falsehoods by a deepfake-voice method to make a candidate lose, an offence under the election law that carries up to seven years in prison. The Taoyuan District Court released him on NT$100,000 bail with an eight-month travel ban, CNA reports. At the hearing he admitted spreading the clip but said he had downloaded it from Facebook, and the court found the file did not yet show a link to whoever originally made it, TVBS reports. Shen said his team had taken legal action against those who made and shared the clip. The man is not named here.
Core concern Medium reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 5 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 31/10/2026
16 Sept 2026UkraineUnidentified image tool
A district court in Ukraine's Poltava region fined the mother of a school pupil on 22 October 2026 after finding she had failed in her duty to bring up her son, who, according to the case materials as reported, used a neural network on 16 September 2026 to generate fake nude photos of his teacher from her image without her consent and sent one to a classmate. The mother admitted the offence and confirmed her son had made such images, saying he sent only one to a classmate and that she did not know how the photos spread further. The court imposed an administrative fine of 850 hryvnias plus court fees. The report does not name the AI tool, and no statement from the teacher is reported.
Core concern Medium reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 30/10/2026
Oct 2026IndiaUnidentified video tool
In late October 2026 a video circulated on social media in which Lt Gen Girish Kalia, who commands the Indian Army's Spear Corps, appeared to say that China had taken control of areas of Arunachal Pradesh and that Indian forces lacked supplies. India TV reports that the Army called the video fake, said it had been made by editing an old video of the officer with the help of AI, and posted the original footage; India TV also reports that some opposition politicians had reposted the video and asked the government to respond. The fact-checker BOOM traced the footage to the officer's October 2023 media briefing in Kupwara about infiltration across the Line of Control, and reports that a deepfake voice detector rated the viral audio as likely a deepfake. Who made the video is not reported.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources · Added 27/10/2026
20 Oct 2026Event location unknownUnidentified video tool (suspected)
On 20 October 2026, during early voting in Texas, a newly created X account posted two videos in which a man presented himself as a former student of James Talarico, the Democratic US Senate candidate and a former middle-school teacher, and accused him of sexual assault in 2012. The threat-intelligence firm Graphika said the account very likely impersonated a real Facebook user of the same name who had been Talarico's student and had praised him, assessed the videos as very likely deepfakes because the face moved unnaturally or out of sync with the audio and AI analysis tools indicated AI generation, and attributed them with high confidence to the Russia-aligned influence operation Storm-1516. PolitiFact reported that NewsGuard found many signs of AI generation and a 98 percent detector score, and that the real former student told the fact-checkers Lead Stories the video was not of him and denied accusing Talarico. Talarico's campaign said he was being slandered with AI deepfakes, foreign bots and conspiracy theories. PolitiFact rated the claim Pants on Fire. Who made the videos and how many people saw them is not established.
Core + contextual relations Medium reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement suspected · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources · Added 25/10/2026
1 Oct 2026United StatesUnidentified video tool
In early October 2026 the campaign of Scott Colom, the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in Mississippi, posted on social media a 19-second AI-generated video showing a woman made to look like his opponent, Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, running from a crowd of reporters at the U.S. Capitol and getting into a car. Local outlets report that the post called it "based on a true story" and did not disclose that it was made with AI. Hyde-Smith's campaign manager called it an AI video and part of a campaign of "lies and deception". On 22 October the Mississippi Republican Party asked the state Attorney General to investigate whether the video broke a state law against knowingly spreading a deceptive AI depiction of a candidate within 90 days of an election, and to seek an injunction. Colom's campaign manager defended the campaign's use of AI and called the complaint desperate; the law exempts satire and parody. On Friday 23 October Attorney General Lynn Fitch said she had notified the campaign that its AI-generated ads appeared to violate the state law against political deepfakes and asked that they be removed that afternoon, or her office might seek an injunction. Colom called the video parody but said the campaign would delete the post rather than spend donors' money on litigation, and by that afternoon two Mississippi stations reported that it no longer appeared on the campaign's Facebook page. No court has ruled on whether the video broke the law.
Core concern Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 7 sources, 5 underlying accounts · Added 23/10/2026
11 Feb 2026Event location unknownUnidentified image tool
Tokyo's Metropolitan Police Department arrested a 32-year-old company employee on 1 August 2026 and referred a 17-year-old high-school student to prosecutors, on suspicion of defamation and public display of child pornography. According to the police, on 11 February 2026 the two, acting together, used generative AI to turn a photo of a woman in her 40s, taken in her first year of junior high school in gym clothes, into two fake nude images, and posted them to a group on social media; the student had asked the man to make the edits. Police say the man is also suspected of posting similar edits of three women in their 20s, that neither suspect knew the women, and that about 3,800 obscene images and videos were found on his phone. The Yomiuri Shimbun, citing investigative sources, reports that police believe he made about 300 such images of women in athletics uniforms or gym clothes and posted about 100, about half at the student's request, and that he admitted the allegations.
Core concern Medium reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources · Added 21/10/2026
Apr 2026Event location unknownUnidentified video tool
The Rhein-Sieg district police reported on 22 June 2026 that a man from a municipality in the district fell for a deep-fake video and invested in a dubious financial product. In April he came across the video by chance on the internet, opened an account and transferred money; when he asked for his money back after supposedly record gains in cryptocurrencies, everything turned out to be fake and, the police say, his small five-figure sum was lost. The police describe the scheme as cybertrading fraud in which fraudsters use AI to falsify the image and voice of prominent people; they do not say whom his video showed.
Core concern Medium reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 19/10/2026
Mar 2026JapanUnidentified video tool (suspected)
The Yomiuri Shimbun reported on 19 March 2026 that in early March an applicant in a Tokyo IT company's online mid-career job interview used the name, career history and apparent face of a real engineer who heads a Tokyo software company. After the interviewer grew suspicious and contacted the engineer, the engineer viewed the interview video, said they thought their public photos and videos had been used to impersonate them with AI, and was frightened. Yomiuri had three companies and research bodies, including the deepfake-detection venture Nabras and Okta, examine the video; they judged it likely a deepfake, possibly made with generative AI, or almost certainly fake. Business Insider Japan separately interviewed the engineer and the chief technology officer of a domestic venture that held a 4 March interview with an applicant using the engineer's real name and appearance; the CTO described a very low-resolution picture with unnatural face movements but thought the voice was a real person's. Who the applicant was is not established.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement suspected · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources · Added 19/10/2026
7 Feb 2026ThailandUnidentified Google image tool (reported)
AFP Fact Check reported on 9 February 2026 that an image showing Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul at a dinner table with South African businessman Benjamin Mauerberger and three women spread in a 7 February Facebook post, and in other Facebook and TikTok posts, on the eve of Thailand's 8 February general election, with captions suggesting the two men had long been in contact. A newsletter has accused Mauerberger of laundering money for scam networks, which he denies, and genuine photos of the two men leaked in December 2025 had already drawn questions from opposition lawmakers. AFP found visual irregularities and ran the image through Google's SynthID detector, which indicated with very high confidence that it was made with Google's AI tools. Anutin publicly denied the photo's authenticity on 7 February, saying it was an AI photo. Who made the image is not reported.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 18/10/2026
Jul 2026Event location unknownUnidentified image tool
A 23-year-old woman told the news site Kaktus.media that in July 2026 she learned that acquaintances had received a nude image of her made with AI from her photograph, and that the sender was a classmate. She says he first told her an app had generated and sent the image by itself, then admitted that he had undressed her Instagram photo through AI himself. In a written statement to the outlet the accused says he used a Telegram bot offering AI photo processing in May or June 2022 and was shocked by the result, and that the images were sent from his Telegram account on the night of 11 to 12 July 2026 by people who had hacked it. The woman says she suffered severe psychological stress and harm to her reputation. She filed a complaint with a district police department on 21 July; after she complained to the prosecutor's office the matter moved to another district department. That department told Kaktus.media that, because the review period expired before expert results arrived, it had refused to open a criminal case and had ordered a new examination. Her lawyer says four motions filed on 5 August have gone unanswered.
Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 17/10/2026
13 Oct 2026BangladeshUnidentified video tool
On 13 October 2026 two videos depicting two Bangladeshi actresses in sexual content were posted on the official Instagram account of the private television channel Maasranga Television. The fact-checking organisation Rumor Scanner reported, as relayed by Prothom Alo and Dhaka Files, that the videos were not genuine and had been made by placing the actresses' faces onto other videos with face-swap technology; Dhaka Files adds that the source videos came from adult websites and describes the technology as AI. The channel said its account had been hacked and that fake images and videos made by misusing AI had been published; it announced that it had recovered the account with the help of BTRC, the CID and Banani police station, removed the videos, expressed regret and said it would take legal action. Dhaka Files reports the videos were viewed roughly 400,000 times before deletion and records doubts about the hack claim, because routine posts continued from the account during the period. On 15 October one of the actresses wrote on her Facebook page that creating and spreading fabricated content in someone's name with AI is a crime. Who made or posted the videos is not established in the sources.
Core concern Medium reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources · Added 16/10/2026
4 Jun 2026TaiwanUnidentified image tool
On the evening of 4 June 2026 an account on X posted a fabricated photo showing Puma Shen (沈伯洋), the Democratic Progressive Party's prospective candidate for Taipei mayor, beside a scantily dressed woman at a table with white powder and apparent drug paraphernalia, suggesting drug use and sex. According to the Taipei District Prosecutors Office decision reported by the Liberty Times and TaiSounds, the account used AI technology to synthesise the image, and it was then reposted by other accounts. On 7 June a 66-year-old man shared it on Facebook with a real photo of Shen and the comment 'does it look alike?'. Shen, who considered his reputation seriously damaged, filed a complaint with the Investigation Bureau's Taipei office, whose deepfake-detection software (Reality Defender) returned 'deepfake detected', and two further tools found the image synthetic. Prosecutors concluded that the man's reposting amounted to aggravated defamation; because he confessed, deleted the posts, published an apology and Shen agreed in writing, they deferred prosecution for two years on 12 October 2026 and ordered ten law-education sessions. The X account's IP address was traced to China and is under separate investigation. Shen is named as a public political figure and the complainant; the resharer is not named.
Core concern Medium reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 12/10/2026
2026United StatesUnidentified video tool
The Independence Institute, a libertarian-leaning Colorado think tank opposing Proposition NN on the November 2026 ballot, posted a video on its social media accounts in which an AI-generated likeness of Democratic state Sen. Cathy Kipp, who sponsored the bill that referred the measure to voters, appears as a grocery store clerk who keeps a customer's change and says it will help educate children. CBS Colorado reported that the institute made the video in response to remarks Kipp made on the Senate floor in April 2026. Kipp filed a campaign finance complaint with the Colorado Secretary of State's office on 5 August 2026, according to Colorado Newsline, alleging that the video lacked the disclosure a 2024 state law requires on deepfakes of candidates and officeholders; the video carried only a small line reading "AI generated content because who gets a human cashier these days?". Kipp said it was "disturbing and wrong to use a deepfake, AI-generated video of someone without their consent". The office decided on 19 August to investigate; a spokesperson said it was the first complaint filed within the statutory timeframe for consideration. The institute says the video is satire, which the law exempts, that the law covers candidates rather than ballot measures, and that applying it would violate the First Amendment. CBS Colorado reported on 9 October 2026 that the institute's lawyer had filed a motion to dismiss and planned to sue Kipp and the state for attorney fees, and that the state elections division disputed the satire defence. No decision is reported.
Core concern Low reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution disputed · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 11/10/2026
2 Feb 2026 to 4 Feb 2026IndiaUnidentified video tool (suspected)
In February 2026 a 16-year-old boy in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, did not return home from a coaching class, and his family filed a missing-person complaint. While they searched, they received a video call from unknown people who claimed to be holding him; the call showed a boy appearing to be threatened with a knife and the callers demanded about Rs 1 lakh through a QR code. In fear, the parents transferred Rs 1.02 lakh. The boy was found safe within two days and said he knew nothing of any video call. Additional DCP (Crime) Rajesh Dandotia told reporters that the family was convinced because they saw what looked like their own child, that police have strong reasons to believe deepfake technology was used, and that the crime branch is investigating; The Indian Express reports that police believe it is the city's first known case of deepfake technology used for extortion. Accounts differ on where the boy had been. The AI involvement is recorded as suspected because no forensic finding is reported.
Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement suspected · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources · Added 11/10/2026
23 Jul 2026 to 31 Jul 2026IndiaUnidentified video tool
In late July 2026 a 44-to-47-second video circulated on social media in which Delhi Police Deputy Commissioner Sumit Jha appeared to announce that he was resigning "immediately" because the government had pressured him to implicate students protesting with the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) on false charges. The fact-checkers Alt News and BOOM traced the frames to a genuine Delhi Police video of 23 July in which the officer warned about Pakistan-based social media handles spreading misinformation. BOOM found a mismatch between the audio and his lip movements and said Deepfake O Meter tools flagged the clip as AI-generated. Alt News reported a 67% likelihood of AI generation from Detectvideo.AI. Delhi Police posted a fact check calling the video "completely fake and AI generated", and the Hindustan Times reports that the Press Information Bureau also said it was AI-generated. After a member of the BJP social media team saw the video in a post by a Congress leader on 31 July, Maharashtra Cyber Police registered an FIR against unknown persons for public mischief and cheating by personation. The officer is named because he is a senior public official depicted in his official role and the fact checks name him; no statement from him is reported.
Core concern Low reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources · Added 11/10/2026
Jun 2026JapanUnidentified video tool (suspected)
In June 2026 a woman in her thirties in Japan's Kansai region received a call from a man claiming to be an Aichi Prefectural Police officer, who said a cash card in her name was linked to a fraud ring and that she was a suspect. She was moved to a Zoom call where a second man, presented as a detective, showed a police notebook, questioned her and told her to search her home on camera for her My Number card. Suspecting fraud, she recorded the exchange and ended it after about an hour; she told reporters the pressure left her flustered and feeling like a culprit. The Osaka Prefectural Police published part of the recording in August, and an analysis it requested from Trend Micro found the detective's face was possibly a deepfake altered with AI (Yomiuri, Asahi, FNN, NHK). No loss is reported.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement suspected · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 11/10/2026
Feb 2026JerseyUnidentified video tool
In February 2026 a TikTok account that used the name, badge and branding of a school in Jersey, and presented itself as "official", uploaded five videos depicting teachers at the school. The Jersey Evening Post (JEP) described the videos as AI-generated deepfakes made with a free app and reported that they showed teachers in humiliating, compromising and sexualised scenarios: in one, two male teachers dance beneath a caption insinuating sexual interest in young girls; a montage shows a teacher barking and eating from a dog bowl and teachers firing guns, while other clips ridicule the appearance of specific staff members. The JEP reported the videos were viewed nearly 20,000 times within days. Education Minister Rob Ward described the content as "deeply inappropriate", confirmed it had been reported to TikTok and the States of Jersey Police, and said his department was working with the school to support staff and students; he said it appeared to be an isolated incident. The account was removed from TikTok. No arrest, charge or identification of the account holder is reported, and no teacher is quoted.
Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 11/10/2026
Jul 2026Event location unknownUnidentified video tool
Hirosaki police in Aomori Prefecture, Japan, announced on 8 October 2026 that a man in his 40s living in the prefecture had been defrauded of ¥720,000 through a video, generated with artificial intelligence, of a real celebrity recommending investment, as reported by the Too Nippo newspaper. According to the police account, in about mid-July he followed a TikTok investment advertisement that impersonated a celebrity into LINE and Signal groups, made an initial profit on recommended shares, and then, at the suggestion of a LINE account, installed an investment app and transferred ¥720,000 from a convenience-store ATM to a designated account. When the app bought shares beyond his holdings and demanded the shortfall, he asked an AI, which pointed out that it might be fraud, and he realised he had been deceived. The celebrity and the tool used to make the video are not named.
Core concern Medium reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 11/10/2026
Jun 2026GermanyUnidentified image tool
A woman in her late twenties from North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, learned at the end of June 2026 from an Instagram user that her face appeared in an advertisement on the classifieds platform Markt.de offering sex meetings and other sexual services, according to her account to the Lippische Landes-Zeitung (14 September 2026) and WDR (9 October 2026). WDR reports that the pictures came from her public Instagram account and were partly altered with AI; the extent of the manipulation is unknown. She filed a criminal complaint and engaged a lawyer; the Bielefeld public prosecutor's office told WDR that investigations are ongoing, and a suspect was identified through the ad, who the report notes could himself be a victim of identity theft. The ad has been taken down. She went public with a video on her Instagram account and says the experience changed how she shares online.
Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources · Added 10/10/2026
7 Oct 2026ArgentinaUnidentified image tool
Infobae and La Nación, each citing the complaint or police report it accessed, report that on 7 October 2026 a 15-year-old fourth-year pupil at a private secondary school in Ituzaingó, Buenos Aires province, received messages from three unknown numbers inviting her out and saying they had got her number from a Telegram group; a link led her to a group sharing pornographic content that included images of her modified with artificial intelligence. According to the complaint, a 15-year-old classmate admitted to her that he had downloaded photos from her Instagram account, edited them with AI to undress her and posted them in the group. Her mother filed a complaint on 8 October 2026 and asked for the harassment to stop; the case is with the juvenile criminal prosecutor's office No. 2 of Morón under Article 128 of the Penal Code (sexual representations of minors for distribution or sale). The school told families that images of pupils from other years had also surfaced and called meetings for 9 October. Two smaller outlets report, without naming their sources, that four pupils aged 15 to 16 are under investigation, that a seven-year-old primary pupil is among possible victims and that a second complaint was filed by the school; La Nación says the police report does not state whether other people are under investigation. The local outlet La Ciudad, citing pupils' testimony including that of a pupil who spoke anonymously, reported that three boys aged 15 and 16 took photos from girls' Instagram profiles and covertly at breaks, sold the AI-altered images on Telegram, and sold one girl's phone number with them, after which she received repeated calls from unknown numbers; the outlet says pupils at the school bought the material, and the anonymous pupil said that, as she understood it, the images were offered for money and that girls from every year were affected. The tool is not identified and no court ruling is reported.
Core concern Medium reported severity Involving minors Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources · Added 10/10/2026