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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
7
Countries with reported events
1
Located 6 of 7 cases · 1 unknown
Languages in checked sources
1
Recorded for 7 of 7 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 HighMedium
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7 of 868 published cases

31 Jan 2025 to 12 Dec 2025United StatesUnidentified AI drafting tool

Oregon federal court dismisses family plaintiffs' claims and fines their lawyer after briefs cited 15 nonexistent cases it attributes to generative AI misuse

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

27 Aug 2026United StatesGPT-5.4 and Claude Opus 5 (reported)

Massachusetts: fired teacher asks court to vacate an arbitration, saying the arbitrator improperly used AI tools to judge her AI-detector evidence

A kindergarten teacher at a public elementary school in Concord, Massachusetts, was dismissed in August 2025 after an unsatisfactory evaluation. In arbitration she argued that some of the principal's evaluations may have been produced with AI, relying on GPTZero estimates; the principal denied using AI beyond grammar checks. According to the arbitration decision as reported by The Concord Bridge, the arbitrator stated in an appendix that he used two AI tools, GPT-5.4 and Claude Opus 5, to research whether GPTZero was reliable, checked some of the sources they supplied, concluded that GPTZero's results deserved no weight, and upheld the dismissal on 27 August 2026. On 28 September 2026 the teacher asked Suffolk Superior Court to vacate the decision, alleging that the AI-assisted research was an improper investigation outside the hearing record that the parties were not told about or allowed to challenge. These are allegations in a complaint; the district declined to comment and no court has ruled.

Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Lawsuit Filed

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources · Added 14/10/2026

2017United StatesWorkday applicant screening tools

Job applicant alleges Workday's AI applicant-screening tools rejected more than 100 of his applications on the basis of race, age and disability; a US federal court let disparate-impact claims proceed and preliminarily certified an age-discrimination collective

Derek Mobley sued Workday in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, alleging that the company's algorithm-based applicant screening tools discriminated against him and other job applicants on the basis of race, age and disability. According to the court's summary of the complaint, Mobley alleges that since 2017 he applied to more than 100 positions with companies that use Workday's screening tools and was denied employment on every one, in one instance less than an hour after applying at 12:55 a.m. On 12 July 2024 the court dismissed the claims of intentional discrimination and allowed the disparate-impact claims to proceed. On 16 May 2025 it granted preliminary certification of a collective on the age-discrimination claim, by which time four further plaintiffs over forty had joined. The Black Information Network, citing Reuters, reported on 24 September 2026 that the plaintiffs had asked the court to certify a class action and that a hearing is set for 9 March 2027. Workday denies wrongdoing and says its customers control how applicants are sorted, reviewed and rejected. No court has ruled on whether the tools discriminated.

Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 05/10/2026

16 Apr 2021United StatesFlock Safety license plate readers (reported)

Atherton, California: police stopped a driver at gunpoint in April 2021 and made him lie on his stomach to be handcuffed after a license-plate reader misread the letter H on his dirty plate as M and matched it to a stolen car; the town settled his lawsuit for $45,000 in 2023

At about 5:30 a.m. on 16 April 2021, according to a lawsuit reported by The Almanac, an automated license-plate reader in Atherton, California, misread the dirt-obscured plate of a driver's car, reading its letter H as M, and matched it to a reported stolen vehicle. Atherton police followed the car for several minutes without visually verifying the plate, then made a high-risk felony stop, ordering him at gunpoint to throw his keys out of the window, get out and lie on his stomach to be handcuffed. He sued three officers in 2022 for unreasonable seizure and excessive force; the officers denied the allegations and the injuries he claimed, and the case was settled on 16 March 2023 for $45,000. Business Insider, citing police records, reported in March 2026 that the misread came from a Flock camera and that officers noted the Flock cameras had misread the plate; an Atherton police commander said the plate was obstructed by dirt and that the town denies wrongdoing.

Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Lawsuit Settled

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

14 Aug 2021 to 14 Mar 2024United StatesSt. Louis mugshot recognition (SMRT)

St. Louis County, Missouri: Christopher Gatlin was arrested in August 2021 after officers ran a grainy bus surveillance photo through a regional facial-recognition system and was held roughly 17 months (Post-Dispatch and Bloomberg Law: about two years) on a first-degree assault charge dismissed in March 2024; his federal civil-rights suit (filed January 2025) was amended in August 2026 to add Amazon Web Services, whose Rekognition technology the complaint says underpinned the match

Christopher Gatlin was arrested on 14 August 2021 for an assault at the St. Charles Rock Road MetroLink station after a joint St. Louis County and city team uploaded a grainy, blurry surveillance photograph from a bus into the St. Louis Mugshot Recognition Technology System, a facial-recognition tool that searches stored mug shots (more than 500,000 uploaded, the suit says per the Post-Dispatch; more than 250,000 per Biometric Update via Hoodline), and built the investigation around the resulting match together with a witness identification; he was charged with first-degree assault and held roughly 17 months (the Post-Dispatch says almost two years), a county judge suppressed the witness identification as unconstitutionally suggestive, and prosecutors dismissed the charges on 14 March 2024 (Post-Dispatch; Hoodline citing Biometric Update; Bloomberg Law). Gatlin sued St. Louis County, the City of St. Louis and named officers in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri on 13 January 2025; on 15 October 2025 the court denied the city's motion to dismiss and granted a detective's motion only as to one count; on 13 August 2026 the court allowed a second amended complaint adding Amazon Web Services, which the complaint says supplied the Rekognition program the system used; the county, city and officers answered on 27 August 2026, AWS's response was extended to 21 September 2026 and on 17 September it moved for a further extension to 28 September (no ruling on the docket when read), and a jury trial is set for 1 November 2027 (CourtListener docket). Amazon told the Post-Dispatch that its terms of service prohibit the use of its facial recognition technology in criminal investigations and that it would fully investigate any information that emerges in the litigation. The ACLU lists Gatlin among fourteen people known to have been wrongfully arrested in the US because police relied on erroneous facial-recognition results.

Contextual tracker case High reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources · Added 26/09/2026

1 Nov 2024 to 28 Jan 2026United StatesTurnitin AI-text detector

Adelphi accused Orion Newby of AI plagiarism after a detector flagged his paper; a Nassau County judge ordered the finding expunged

Orion Newby, an Adelphi University first-year student with language and auditory processing disabilities, received a zero in November 2024 on a World Civilizations paper after the professor suspected it was AI-generated and the university relied in part on AI-detection software; he was ordered to attend a plagiarism workshop and his appeal was denied, leaving him one finding from suspension or expulsion. Newby — who had written the paper with 15-20 hours of tutor support through the university's own disability program — said the detectors flagged his citations, and two other detectors scored the paper as human. After the family sued, New York State Supreme Court Judge Randy Sue Marber in Nassau County ruled on 28 January 2026 that Adelphi's finding and its denial of his appeal were 'without valid basis and devoid of reason' and ordered his record expunged. The family spent six figures on legal costs.

Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Lawsuit Filed

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 15/09/2026

24 May 2025 to 27 Jun 2025Event location unknownGoogle AI Overviews

Keene v. Google: defamation claim over AI Overviews calling an author a convicted murderer survives dismissal

An author and television producer, the subject of the Apple TV series 'Black Bird', sued Google, alleging that AI Overviews shown for searches about him in May and June 2025 falsely said he was serving a life sentence without parole, in one version for the murders of three women. He says he notified Google three times and received apologies attributing the statements to its AI, yet similar statements kept appearing. On 14 September 2026 the Northern District of Illinois denied Google's motion to dismiss as to two of the four challenged Overviews and dismissed the other two without prejudice. This was a ruling on the pleadings, not a finding that the allegations were proven.

Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 15/09/2026

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: 23/10/2026. Dataset available under CC BY 4.0.