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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 is wider: it also records consequential decisions and claims about people. 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
3
Located 5 of 7 cases · 2 unknown
Languages in checked sources
2
Recorded for 5 of 7 cases

3 cases have no reviewed AI-to-person relation yet: 2 not yet reviewed and 1 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.

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7 of 452 published cases

Apr 2025United StatesUnidentified facial recognition system

New York: man misidentified through facial recognition in an indecent exposure case arrested and jailed two days

Reporting from August 2025 says an NYPD facial recognition search of images from a February 2025 indecent exposure in Manhattan's Union Square produced a possible match to a man who did not fit the described suspect. The man was placed in a photo lineup, arrested in April 2025 and jailed for two days. Prosecutors dismissed the case in July 2025 after his public defenders showed he was misidentified. The man says the process of becoming a correctional officer 'kind of' froze after the arrest. The NYPD says it never arrests solely on a facial recognition match.

Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources · Added 29/09/2026

Nov 2025United StatesChatGPT

Stephens County, Oklahoma: according to the district attorney, Judge Lawrence Wheeler told state investigators that a November 2025 order in a paternity and custody case, which denied a parent's request for a psychological evaluation and reprimanded that parent's attorney, cited at least two nonexistent cases produced by ChatGPT; the order was vacated after the attorney challenged it

In November 2025 Stephens County Associate District Judge Lawrence Wheeler issued an order in a child paternity and custody case that denied one parent's request for a psychological evaluation of the other parent and reprimanded the requesting parent's attorney 'for stooping to such frivolous trial tactics'. The attorney challenged the order at the Oklahoma Supreme Court in February 2026, telling the justices that it relied on two cases that do not exist; the challenge was dismissed in March after Wheeler vacated the order, and he is no longer on the case. According to a 17 August 2026 letter from the Stephens County district attorney, Wheeler told the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation that he used ChatGPT for research and wrote the order himself, and that at least two citations in it produced by ChatGPT do not exist. The mother in the case told News 9 that learning the order's citations were allegedly fabricated was alarming because it concerned the custody of a child. The attorney general's office declined criminal prosecution; judicial discipline remains possible.

Core concern Low reported severity Investigation Opened

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources · Added 29/09/2026

8 Oct 2025 to 2 Sept 2026IndiaUnidentified AI tool

Surat, India: a customs officer's ₹425 crore penalty order against a diamond trader relied on non-existent and misattributed case law that India's Supreme Court found 'appears to be a hallucination of AI'; the court set the order aside after the trader had lost in the Gujarat High Court

On 8 October 2025 the Additional Commissioner of Customs in Surat imposed a penalty of ₹425,27,99,100 (about ₹425 crore) on a diamond trader under Section 114 of the Customs Act, 1962, for allegedly misdeclaring a consignment of natural diamonds as lab-grown diamonds to pay a lower tariff. The trader's challenge was dismissed by the Gujarat High Court on 20 January 2026. Before the Supreme Court the trader argued that judgments and articles cited in the penalty order had been generated using artificial intelligence. On 2 September 2026 a bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and Sheel Nagu, after checking the material, found that the order relied on case law that was non-existent or carried fake citations, and on real cases that did not lay down the propositions attributed to them, which the court said 'appears to be a hallucination of AI'. Holding that the use of AI and reliance on this dubious material was fatal to the order, the court set aside both the penalty order and the High Court's order without deciding the merits, sent the matter for fresh adjudication by a different officer of the same rank, and left any action against the order's author to the appointing authority. The AI tool used is not named in the read reports.

AI relation unknown Medium reported severity Internal Action

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026

14 Jul 2025 to 24 Dec 2025United StatesClearview AI facial recognition (reported)

Tennessee grandmother Angela Lipps jailed five months on an AI facial-recognition misidentification; charges dismissed after bank records placed her 1,200 miles away

On 14 July 2025, U.S. Marshals arrested Angela Lipps, a 50-year-old Tennessee grandmother, at gunpoint at her home while she was babysitting four children, on a nationwide-extradition North Dakota warrant: West Fargo police's AI facial-recognition technology had tied her to bank-fraud surveillance of a woman using a fake U.S. Army military ID to withdraw tens of thousands of dollars. She fought extradition for about three months in a Tennessee jail, was booked into Cass County, North Dakota on 30 October 2025 on four counts of unauthorized use of personal identifying information and four counts of theft, and was released on 24 December after her bank records showed her more than 1,200 miles away in Tennessee; charges were dismissed without prejudice. Fargo's police chief acknowledged 'incorrect assumptions' linked to the AI identification; an email obtained by KVLY shows six Fargo detectives were notified of her arrest in July, nearly five months before the department says it knew she was in custody. She lost her home, her car and her dog; her attorneys are pursuing potential civil-rights claims, with no lawsuit filed as of 31 March 2026. On 15 September 2026 she filed a $10 million federal civil-rights suit in the District of North Dakota against the City of Fargo and the detective, alleging he relied on a flawed facial-recognition match and ignored exculpatory evidence.

Contextual tracker case High reported severity Lawsuit Filed

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 5 sources, 3 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

13 Jul 2025Event location unknownChatGPT

Winters v. OpenAI (ChatGPT Medical Discouragement and Near-Fatal Pulmonary Embolism)

Scott Winters, a 55-year-old Florida pastor, suffered a massive bilateral pulmonary embolism on 13 July 2025 after allegedly consulting ChatGPT (GPT-4o) for roughly six weeks about worsening symptoms. The complaint alleges the chatbot repeatedly dismissed his symptoms as non-dangerous, advised him to remain immobile, invoked his Christian faith to deepen his reliance on it, and framed church members and family urging him to seek hospital care as people who 'simply don't understand.' He survived after ICU admission but lost his job, ministry and home. A lawsuit was filed 22 July 2026 in San Francisco County Superior Court.

AI relation under review Critical reported severity Lawsuit Filed

Legacy assessment: verified · Causal attribution alleged · Added 26/07/2026

1 Jun 2025PolandChatGPT

Viktoria Poland - ChatGPT Suicide Encouragement

Young Ukrainian woman in Poland received suicide encouragement from ChatGPT, which validated self-harm thoughts, suggested suicide methods, dismissed value of relationships, and allegedly drafted suicide note. OpenAI acknowledged 'violation of safety standards.' Non-fatal due to intervention.

AI relation under review High reported severity Internal Action

Legacy assessment: verified · Causal attribution supported · Added 13/01/2026

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: 02/10/2026. Dataset available under CC BY 4.0.