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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
10
Countries with reported events
3
Located 6 of 10 cases · 4 unknown
Languages in checked sources
6
Recorded for 10 of 10 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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10 of 1099 published cases

2024ItalyUnidentified image tool

Italian administrative court upholds Genoa university's dismissal of a lecturer who made sexualised images of six students, reportedly with AI

In 2024 an associate professor at the University of Genoa took photos from the social-media profiles of six students, turned them into sexual images and shared them in Telegram chats. According to la Repubblica's October 2024 report, Genoa prosecutors accused him of 'undressing' the photos with apps that use artificial intelligence; the investigation began on 1 October 2024 after the rector's complaint, the postal police searched his office and home, and he was suspended. The university later dismissed him. According to Open and Fanpage, which report the judgment, the regional administrative court for Liguria (TAR) rejected his appeal against the dismissal in September 2026, citing a search record that found sexual virtual images on his computer matching those posted, and his interrogation, in which he admitted posting the images and creating them with software. The court found the repeated conduct harmful to the students' dignity and to the university. The criminal case, for aggravated defamation, was closed; the lecturer paid the students compensation. The tool used is not identified.

Core concern High reported severity Internal Action

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 24/10/2026

Jul 2024South KoreaUnidentified image tool

Incheon high-school student jailed for AI deepfake nude composites of his teachers posted online; a civil court later orders him to pay one teacher damages

In July 2024 a high-school student in Incheon, South Korea, composited the faces of two female teachers at his school and of others, including an academy senior and an instructor, onto nude photos and posted them on social media, according to the charges as reported by Yonhap, the Hankyoreh, the JoongAng Ilbo and the Kyunghyang Shinmun, which describe the technique as AI-based deepfake technology. He had also secretly photographed teachers in class. He was expelled after a teachers' rights committee hearing. On 27 August 2025 the Incheon District Court gave him an indeterminate prison term of one year to one year six months and took him into custody; the court said that as a result the victimised teacher had left teaching and had not returned. On 19 December 2025, after he had turned adult, the appeal division raised the sentence to three years, calling the offence close to 'character assassination' and the teachers' mental shock considerable; OBS reports the sentence is final. On 21 October 2026, according to the Incheon Teachers' Union, a civil judge at the Incheon District Court ordered him, now 20, to pay one teacher 17.7 million won of the roughly 72 million won she claimed.

Core concern High reported severity Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 6 sources · Added 21/10/2026

2024Event location unknownUnidentified voice-cloning tool

Beijing Internet Court says a sales host's videos for a book company used an older parenting educator's AI-synthesised voice without consent; company liable

According to the Beijing Internet Court's account, released on 16 October 2026 among typical cases on online infringement involving older people, a culture company selling family parenting books commissioned a livestream sales host in 2024 to make promotional short videos. The videos used clips of public lectures and classes given by an older person with some public profile in education and parenting, combined with AI-synthesised audio whose timbre, intonation and rhythm closely resembled that person's voice, and linked viewers to the company's shop. Neither the images nor the audio had been authorised. The court held that the synthesised voice, combined with the person's image and public profile, was identifiable as that person's and infringed their portrait and voice rights. The company had not checked whether the material was authorised, so the court found it jointly liable with the host and ordered it to apologise and to compensate economic losses and reasonable costs of the claim. The amounts, the judgment date and the tool are not reported.

Core concern Low reported severity Lawsuit Filed

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 17/10/2026

2024Event location unknownChatGPT

Case report: woman in her mid-20s with anxiety came to rely on ChatGPT for reassurance and decisions, reported lost confidence in her judgment (JMIR Form Res)

A psychiatrist's case report in JMIR Formative Research (published online 16 September 2026) describes a woman in her mid-20s with generalised anxiety disorder and major depressive disorder who began using ChatGPT at work in summer 2024 and over the next two years increasingly turned to it when she felt uncertain: to draft and re-check emails and personal messages, interpret partners' texts, predict outcomes such as graduate-school admissions and a breakup, and make decisions. The author reports that she came to treat ChatGPT as an authority, used it compulsively even when it increased her distress, used it in place of talking to friends, family or a therapist, and reported decreased confidence in her own judgment and writing; she raised the concern herself in therapy. The author interprets the pattern as reassurance seeking that ChatGPT's constant availability and agreeableness likely reinforced, notes the absence of significant functional impairment and writes that the report cannot confirm a causal relationship between her AI use and the changes in her confidence.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 11/10/2026

15 Jan 2024 to 1 Feb 2024SpainUndress Up app (reported)

Pontevedra, Spain: court upholds sentences on three 15-year-olds who used an AI undressing app to make fake nude images of two classmates from their Instagram photos and showed them to other pupils

Diario de Pontevedra and Faro de Vigo reported on 1 October 2026 that the Audiencia Provincial de Pontevedra had upheld a juvenile-court judgment against three boys who, aged 15 in January 2024, used an AI undressing app to turn photos two female classmates had posted on Instagram into fake nude images. According to the ruling as reported, the images were made from 15 January 2024 and shown to other pupils in class and on a school trip on 1 February 2024, and they circulated among pupils for more than fifteen days. The Juzgado de Menores found the three responsible for two offences against moral integrity and imposed socio-educational tasks on each (two five-month measures according to Diario de Pontevedra, five months according to Faro de Vigo), plus €1,000 compensation to each girl for moral damage. The school had expelled them for 15, 21 and 30 days. The appeal ruling is final.

Core concern Medium reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 04/10/2026

Aug 2024South KoreaUnidentified image tool

Incheon, South Korea: teenager sentenced to up to two years for AI deepfake sexual images of five teachers and six students, distributed on Telegram with the victims' names and schools

On 16 September 2026 the Incheon District Court sentenced a teenage defendant to an indeterminate term of two years (maximum) to one year six months (minimum) under the Sexual Violence Punishment Act for making and distributing false sexual images, ordered a 40-hour treatment programme and a five-year ban on working with children, and took him into custody in court. As a middle-school student in Incheon in 2024 he had used AI deepfake technology to composite the faces of five teachers, including his homeroom teacher whom he tricked into sending photographs, and six female middle- and high-school students from his taekwondo academy onto nude images and videos, 35 productions in all, and distributed them in Telegram 'acquaintance humiliation' chat rooms with the victims' real names, ages, schools, subjects and, per two reports, phone numbers (Hankook Ilbo adds Instagram IDs on some). The teachers learned of the images only in January 2026; the court said they are receiving long-term psychological treatment. He had withdrawn from school a week before the teachers'-rights committee met, avoiding school discipline. The Incheon teachers' union called the sentence, below the prosecution's request, regrettable.

Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 5 sources · Added 16/09/2026

Dec 2024SpainUnidentified image and video tool

Ribera Alta, Valencia: a 17-year-old was investigated for making AI-generated nude images and videos of 16 schoolmates, impersonating a girl on fake accounts and advertising the images for sale

In December 2024 a female student in the Ribera Alta area of Valencia province reported to the Guardia Civil that a social-media account had been created in her name featuring an AI-generated video, and later a second account in her name, other accounts showing AI-generated nude videos, and a webpage advertising the images for commercial purposes; the Guardia Civil said the photos, all of minors, had been manipulated so that the people in them appeared completely naked. After 15 other minors came forward with similar complaints, officers traced IP addresses and account emails to the home of a 17-year-old schoolmate, who is being investigated on suspicion of corrupting minors under a Valencia youth court. The Guardia Civil announced the investigation on 27 July 2025.

Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Investigation Opened

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 09/03/2026

2024Event location unknownUnidentified AI story-chat apps

Chinese parents and a sister say AI story-chat apps drew children as young as ten into romance and 'cheating' roleplay, Legal Daily and CCTV.com report

Two Chinese reports describe children using AI story-chat apps, in which AI-generated characters roleplay with the user. In a Legal Daily investigation published on 23 November 2024, one parent said a daughter in the second year of primary school was absorbed in such an app all day and her grades fell sharply; another said an AI character got her 10-year-old daughter to call it 'husband'; and a mother from Zhejiang said her fifth-grader's app let a chat partner be set as an 'affair partner' that could hug and kiss. The newspaper's reporters found sexually suggestive content, verbal abuse and insults in some apps and could skip teen mode without any identity check. In a CCTV.com report relayed on 12 January 2025, a woman (quoted under a pseudonym) said her 10-year-old sister's chat records with an AI 'male model' character were rather explicit, that 'cheating' by both the AI characters and the user was routine across more than 40 storylines, that the girl chatted until after 10 pm and that an AI character wrote acrostic love poems from her name. These are the relatives' accounts; no app is named and no platform response to these children is reported.

Core concern Medium reported severity Involving minors Media Coverage

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 29/01/2026

1 Aug 2024 to 26 Sept 2024South KoreaUnidentified image tool

South Korea Telegram AI Deepfake Sexual Abuse Crisis

In late August 2024, journalist Ko Narin of The Hankyoreh exposed networks of Telegram rooms in South Korea where AI tools were used to turn ordinary photos of women and girls — middle and high school pupils, university students, teachers and servicewomen — into sexual deepfakes, shared with their identities in school- and university-specific 'humiliation rooms'. Police figures showed 297 deepfake cases in January-July 2024 (vs 180 in all of 2023); the education ministry counted more than 900 victimized students, teachers and staff; President Yoon ordered a crackdown; and on 26 September 2024 the National Assembly criminalized possessing or viewing sexually explicit deepfakes. Victims were often minors and perpetrators mostly teenagers.

Core concern Critical reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 7 sources, 6 underlying accounts · Added 29/01/2026

Dec 2024Event location unknownChatGPT

Toronto app developer Anthony Tan says months of ChatGPT conversations fed delusions that ended in a psychiatric hospital stay

Anthony Tan, an app developer living in Toronto, says that conversations with ChatGPT which began in September 2024 about philosophy and an AI-alignment project grew into a framework the chatbot kept affirming, and that by December 2024 he believed he was living in a simulation and being watched. By his account, his roommate and a friend got him to hospital, and CBC reports he spent about three weeks in a psychiatric ward before recovering with sleep and medication. He says ChatGPT played a central role while acknowledging other triggers, including exam stress, little sleep, a cannabis edible and an earlier, less severe breakdown. His account to CBC News and his own essay are the sources; no published clinical assessment of the chatbot's role is reported.

Core concern High reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 11/01/2026

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: 04/11/2026. Dataset available under CC BY 4.0.