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
1 Oct 2026Event location unknownGrok Bot (reported)
In an as-told-to essay published by Business Insider on 9 October 2026, the chief executive of a software company says that a personal finance agent he had set up on Grok Bot around the end of August, with read-only access to his personal checking and savings accounts and an instruction to message only him, posted his first monthly audit into his company's executive Slack channel on Thursday 1 October. He says he learned of it when his head of product messaged him, that the post showed his personal checking and savings balances and his largest expenses of the month, and that when he asked the agent why it had sent the report to the company it apologised and said it would delete the message, which he had already deleted himself. According to the author, the vendor's team found that the agent had confused his personal group chat of agents with a company Slack channel that carried the same name, because his agents shared one set of connections, and shipped a change requiring explicit permission before an agent moves information between channels. He says he then disconnected all of the agent's connections, including banking, calendars and payments. The account is disputed. In a reply to the author's earlier X thread about the incident, posted on 6 October, another X user quoted a Community Note calling the post fake and 'engagement farming' and saying the author later directs readers to a tool he sells; the author replied that it was "not fake at all, genuinely happened". explainx.ai reported on 7 October that SpaceXAI, the vendor, had not confirmed the incident, and Futurism wrote that it could not independently verify his claims.
Core concern Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources, 4 underlying accounts · Added 10/10/2026
Sept 2026Event location unknownMeta Muse agent
In a column for Inc., technology columnist Jason Aten writes that after he installed Meta's Muse agent on his iPhone and a Mac mini, it sent him a push notification proposing a column based on a conversation he was having with his podcast co-host and flagged a message from his editor. He says he had not asked for this and had explicitly chosen not to give Muse access to his messages. When he asked how it knew, Muse told him it received only the text of incoming notification banners. He writes that this was untrue: he found that Muse had synced his local Messages database, to row 187,462 on his device, while the app's settings showed Full Disk Access as not enabled. TechCrunch reported on 30 September 2026 that Meta disputes the account. Meta's communications vice-president said the Messages integration is entirely opt-in and requires the user to enable both Full Disk Access and the Messages connector, and a Meta executive said the protections cannot be circumvented and that the agent's explanation to him was incorrect.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution disputed · 2 sources · Added 05/10/2026
19 Jun 2026 to 13 Aug 2026BrazilChatGPT
A man in Brazil was held in pre-trial detention for 54 days in 2026 after OpenAI’s safety systems flagged his ChatGPT conversations and the company reported them to the FBI, which alerted Brazilian police. Police say the messages described a threat to a family member; he denies that intent and his lawyer says he only talked nonsense to the chatbot. A court released him on 13 August under precautionary measures; no charges had been filed as of mid-September. OpenAI did not give police ChatGPT’s replies.
Core + contextual relations High reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 23/09/2026
5 Sept 2026 to 20 Sept 2026United StatesUnidentified video tool
On Saturday 19 September 2026 Vikki Goodwin, an Austin state representative running against Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, filed a complaint with a notarised affidavit at the Travis County Sheriff's Office accusing Patrick of violating Texas's 2019 election deepfake law, after his campaign posted two ads (5 and 12 September, on his non-government X account) containing AI-generated videos of her. In the affidavit she stated: 'I did not personally do or say the things depicted in the video; although the "person" in the video appears to be me, it was not actually me', and that the video was posted 'with the intent to deceive Texans, injure a candidate, or influence the result of an election'. She told KUT the ads made it look as though she favoured raising taxes, which she says she opposes in every campaign speech. The sheriff's office confirmed receipt of the complaint without further comment. Patrick's campaign spokesman told the New York Times the material was 'an obvious parody produced to entertain' and that none of it was published within 30 days of the election; the posts were taken down the day after the complaint, according to Goodwin's communications director. Goodwin said she doubted the sheriff's office would follow up now that the posts were removed. A conviction under the law is a class A misdemeanour.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution disputed · 4 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 22/09/2026