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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

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Published cases
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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.

No known event years in this selection.

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1 of 780 published cases

Event date unknownEvent location unknownEmochi, Pollybuzz and Character.AI (reported)

First-person post: companion chatbot user says quitting the apps in 2025 brought a mental health episode and an A&E visit, and heavy use resumed in 2026

In a post in r/ChatbotAddiction on 18 October 2026, a person who describes a chatbot addiction says they used companion chatbot apps, naming Pollybuzz, Emochi and Character.AI, for three years, starting as a way to cope with autism and the isolation that comes with it. They say they quit cold turkey on 20 March 2025 and that this first time they quit they had a mental health episode, went to A&E once because of it, and were put on antidepressants, which they still take. They say that while using the apps they skipped school days. They write that exactly a year later they went back to the apps and could not stop, that since March 2026 it has consumed them again, and that they want to quit but do not know whether they can. They also say guilt hit them as soon as they stopped, that they knew the apps were bad for the planet but the urge was too strong, and that they currently have a gap in their antidepressant supply. The account is uncorroborated and no chats are shown.

Core concern Medium reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 20/10/2026

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: 20/10/2026. Dataset available under CC BY 4.0.