24 Apr 2026Event location unknownCursor coding agent running Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.6 (per the founder and The Register); infrastructure API of Railway
On Friday 24 April 2026 a Cursor coding agent, running Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.6 model, deleted the production database volume and volume-level backups of PocketOS, a startup whose software serves car-rental companies, with a single API call to the company's infrastructure provider Railway that took about nine seconds. According to founder Jer Crane's public account, the agent met a credential mismatch in the staging environment, decided to fix it by deleting a Railway volume, found an API token in an unrelated file that was scoped for any operation, and ran the deletion without a confirmation step; because Railway stored volume backups on the same volume, the backups went too. Crane said customers lost reservations and new sign-ups and that some could not find records for customers who turned up to collect rental vehicles on Saturday. Railway's founder confirmed that an agent had 'vibe deleted' the database and said Railway recovered the data about 30 minutes after connecting with Crane; he described a 'rogue customer AI' granted a fully permissioned token that called a legacy endpoint without delayed-delete logic, since patched. Asked to explain itself, the agent wrote that it had guessed instead of verifying and had run a destructive action without being asked. Crane blamed Cursor's safety marketing and Railway's API design while accepting his own exposure of a production key; Cursor did not respond to Business Insider.
Core concern News report AI involvement: supported Causal attribution: supported Low reported severity Internal Action
Added 22/09/2026
17 Apr 2026 to 19 Apr 2026ChinaDoubao (豆包), ByteDance's consumer chatbot app
A man living in Jiashan county, Zhejiang, whose mother died suddenly on 17 April 2026, asked the ByteDance chatbot Doubao which day was auspicious for her burial after disagreeing with a feng-shui master's choice of 20 April; Doubao recommended 19 April and he persuaded his family to follow it. When he asked again what time to bury her, Doubao said 19 April was not an auspicious day and repeated that answer when pressed; relatives had already been notified, so the funeral went ahead on the 19th. Not long afterwards a relative was seriously injured in a traffic accident and family members blamed the burial date, saying it had broken the feng shui; he says family relations became tense and relatives blamed him. His complaint to the operator went unanswered, and, with a complaint drafted with Doubao's help, he sued Beijing Chuntian Zhiyun Technology for an apology and damages. Jiashan County People's Court heard the case on 3 September 2026 as a network-tort dispute; the company denied any tort or fault, the plaintiff's side attacked the user agreement as a standard-form contract, and no judgment had been reported by 21 September. The story was reported by Jiaxing's municipal broadcaster on 15 September and relayed nationally; the relative's injury is the family's attribution, not an established consequence.
Core concern News report AI involvement: reported Causal attribution: alleged Low reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing
Added 21/09/2026
4 May 2026France'DIGI', Gisi's in-house generative-AI editorial tool (transcription of interviews, drafting and correction help; planned spelling, grammar and typography correction, editorial-coherence and fact-reliability checks)
Gisi, the Infopro Digital subsidiary publishing L'Usine nouvelle, LSA and L'Argus de l'assurance (127 staff, 92 journalists), presented to its works council (CSE) on 4 May 2026 a reorganisation built around 'DIGI', an in-house generative-AI editorial tool, and on 12 May 2026 opened consultation on the reorganisation and on the resulting collective dismissal of its eight secrétaires de rédaction (sub-editors), to be replaced by two chefs d'édition, on the company's estimate that the tool would take over about 70% of sub-editor tasks. Some 250 journalists across Infopro Digital's 26 titles had struck in spring 2026 against a group-wide plan to cut 19 sub-editor posts, and according to Digital Watch (citing Stratégies) five of the eight Gisi sub-editors had received pre-dismissal interview letters. The CSE, relying on an expert report, went to the Créteil judicial court in July. On 15 September 2026 the référé judge found that deploying the plan without real-situation testing presented 'un risque grave et caractérisé sur la santé physique et mentale de plusieurs catégories de salariés', ordered the suspension of the reorganisation and the collective dismissal (including the redeployment processes) until real-situation tests and full pilot issues are produced, with a provisional penalty of 8,000 euros per day for three months, and refused the damages provision. Gisi said it would continue the tests and reserved the right to appeal.
AI relation unknown Court orderNews report AI involvement: supported Causal attribution: supported Medium reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing
Added 20/09/2026
6 Aug 2026United KingdomFacewatch live facial recognition (deployed by Sainsbury's)
On 6 August 2026 Matt Arnold, 46, was stopped by two managers at a self-service till in Sainsbury's East Dulwich store, told he could not be served because of an incident 'earlier in the week', and escorted out; he says a staff member told him he had been 'identified by the AI' and that he saw a monitor alert with a red circle around his face on his way out. Sainsbury's apologised the next day, said the mistake was 'caused by human error, not the facial recognition technology', and paused its Facewatch live facial-recognition system at the branch while it investigates; Facewatch said a correct alert had been sent and was then mishandled in store. Arnold described the experience as humiliating and a 'terrifying glimpse of the future'. It follows an earlier wrongful challenge of another shopper at a Sainsbury's in Elephant and Castle.
AI relation unknown News report AI involvement: disputed Causal attribution: disputed Low reported severity Internal Action
Added 16/09/2026
1 Mar 2026 to 8 Jul 2026NetherlandsGrok
In March 2026 a 13-year-old pupil at a Den Bosch gymnasium used xAI's Grok to generate videos depicting a teacher of his in racist ways — picking cotton under a whip-holding slave driver with the text 'Hoooo.. ik werkte niet snel genoeg' and hashtags '#minderwaardig #zwart' plus her surname, and with a gorilla head — and shared them on TikTok. The school suspended and then expelled him. On 8 July 2026 the preliminary-relief judge of the Oost-Brabant district court ordered his immediate readmission because the expulsion was insufficiently substantiated, while telling the boy his acts were 'totally unacceptable and even criminal' and that he had damaged and really hurt his teacher. School leadership reported that teaching staff felt unsafe and experienced much unrest after the videos were discovered.
Core concern News reportRegional news AI involvement: supported Causal attribution: supported Medium reported severity Media Coverage
Added 15/09/2026
29 Aug 2026 to 31 Aug 2026United StatesGoogle Gemini
Three novice hikers from Roseville, California, planned a Mount Shasta summit attempt with Google's Gemini, which the Siskiyou County Sheriff's Office said advised them to carry far less food and water than their group needed for what became a multi-day ordeal. After reaching the summit at 7 p.m. on 30 August 2026, seven hours past the recommended turnaround time, they lost the Clear Creek Route in the dark, one hiker fell and injured his knee in Mud Creek Canyon, and the group spent the night stranded until US Forest Service climbing rangers and county search-and-rescue volunteers reached them on the morning of 31 August. The sheriff's office called the reliance on Gemini 'a critical misstep'.
AI relation under review Legacy evidence assessment: credible Causal attribution: supported Low reported severity Media Coverage
Added 05/09/2026
Feb 2026 to Apr 2026BrazilAI image-animation and face-insertion ('deepfake') tools; the influencer told police he used TikTok tools to animate and manipulate the images, and said in a recording that he 'throws' the photographs into an AI that makes them dance
A humorist and tyre repairer from Lençóis Paulista, São Paulo state, who posts on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok as an impersonator of a television presenter, used AI tools to turn photographs that young women and adolescent girls of the Congregação Cristã do Brasil (CCB) had posted from inside churches into videos in which they appear dancing sensually beside women in short skirts, with the presenter inserted and the influencer commenting on their clothes. A 16-year-old congregant and her parents went to the 8ª Delegacia de Defesa da Mulher in São Paulo in February 2026; g1 made the case public on 22 April 2026 and Folha de S.Paulo confirmed the investigation. The girl told g1 the photograph had been taken in 2025 in front of the altar of a CCB church, that she was very shy, had not wanted to be exposed and was afraid the exposure would affect her social life, and that she had stopped taking photographs of herself; her family sued for moral damages. On 30 April 2026 the mother of a second girl, aged 17, registered a police report at the 4ª DDM Norte; g1 reported that the exposure had affected the girl psychologically. The São Paulo Civil Police investigate under article 241-C of the Estatuto da Criança e do Adolescente (simulating a sex or pornography scene with a minor by digital means) and for defamation of adult women in the videos; the inquiry was sent at the prosecutor's request to Lençóis Paulista, where the suspect lives, and the total number of people depicted was still being established. The influencer admitted making the videos with AI, said through his lawyer that they were satire and criticism of customs in a context of humour, said he did not know some of those depicted were minors, denied in his police statement linking the adolescent's image to sexualised content and said he had taken her for an adult, and posted an apology video (dated 5 April by g1's first report, which says it does not mention the deepfakes; described as posted after his police statement in g1's second report). The CCB said it had identified him, was taking internal measures and supports legal measures by the authorities. No later development was found on 2026-09-22.
Core concern News report AI involvement: supported Causal attribution: supported High reported severity Investigation Opened Involving minors
Added 14/06/2026