Event date unknownEvent location unknownUnidentified image tool
On 21 August 2025 the Montana Attorney General's Office charged a Carter County man with three felony counts of sexual abuse of children for possessing child sexual abuse material. Prosecutors state that in at least one count an AI tool was used to alter images of a Montana child that were taken from the child's parents' public social media account. The investigation began with cyber tips about uploads to a cloud backup. The charges are allegations. The child and the accused are not named here. The only reported harmed person is the depicted child and the sources report no other consequence, so the harm evidence is weak: it rests on the prosecutors' description of the charged conduct. The date of the conduct is not reported.
Core concern Low reported severity Involving minors
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026
Event date unknownAustraliaUnidentified image tool
ABC reported on 23 and 24 July 2026 that police in Queensland, Australia charged a former secondary school teacher at a school there with child exploitation and computer misuse offences. Police allege the teacher used AI software on a work-issued laptop to generate explicit images depicting staff members and students. Police say a nine-month investigation began in October after they were notified of the material, and the school says it dismissed the teacher in October 2025, notified police and regulators, and that there is no evidence the material was shared. The number of people depicted and the creation date are not stated.
Core concern Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026
4 Jun 2025 to 15 Oct 2025Event location unknownChatGPT (reported)
On 4 June 2025 a criminal judge in Esquel, Chubut province, convicted a defendant of simple robbery and imposed two years and six months of effective imprisonment. On 15 October 2025 the Penal Chamber of Esquel annulled the judgment and the trial, ordering a new trial before another judge. The chamber found that the ruling contained a pasted phrase from a generative-AI assistant (“Aquí tienes el punto IV reeditado, sin citas y listo para copiar y pegar”), that the AI had been used on the rulings on the nullity of two essential pieces of evidence, and that the judge had not exercised human supervision or recorded the use. Perfil's headline describes the assistant as ChatGPT and La Nación's text as presumably ChatGPT; the quoted ruling and the prosecution office statement refer only to a generative-AI assistant. The chamber referred the judge's conduct to the Chubut Superior Court of Justice for ethical and disciplinary review.
Contextual tracker case Low reported severity
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026
12 Mar 2025 to 15 Mar 2025AustraliaChatGPT
The NSW Reconstruction Authority says that between 12 and 15 March 2025 a former temporary staff member (earlier described as a former contractor) uploaded an Excel spreadsheet with 10 columns and more than 12,000 rows from the Northern Rivers Resilient Homes Program to ChatGPT, an AI tool the Authority had not authorised. The Authority first disclosed the breach on 6 October 2025 as affecting up to 3000 people and later confirmed through external forensic analysis that 2031 people had data uploaded, including names, contact details, addresses, dates of birth and sensitive personal information (an earlier notice also listed health information). It reports no evidence that the data was made public or accessed by a third party, and that no driver licence, Medicare, passport or Tax File Numbers were included. The Authority apologised, offered ID Support NSW assistance and committed to compensate reasonable document replacement costs. One participant told the ABC they were concerned. No misuse of the data is reported.
AI relation unknown Low reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026
10 Feb 2026United StatesClaude
Bradley Heppner, a corporate executive charged in the Southern District of New York with securities fraud, wire fraud and related offences, used Anthropic's Claude in 2025, after receiving a grand jury subpoena, to prepare reports outlining his defence strategy. His counsel had not directed him to do so. FBI agents seized about thirty-one documents memorialising those exchanges when they searched his home in connection with his arrest in November 2025. Heppner claimed privilege over them. On 10 February 2026 Judge Jed S. Rakoff granted from the bench the Government's motion for a ruling that the documents were not protected from Government inspection by either the attorney-client privilege or the work product doctrine, and a memorandum filed 17 February 2026 gave the reasons: Claude is not an attorney, and the communications were not confidential under Anthropic's privacy policy. The court described the question as one of first impression nationwide. Heppner was convicted in May 2026 of securities fraud, wire fraud and other charges; no inspected source says whether the Claude documents were used at trial.
Core concern Low reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 4 sources · Added 29/09/2026
27 Sept 2025 to 15 Oct 2025United StatesFlock Safety license plate readers
On 27 September 2025 a sergeant from the Columbine Valley Police Department, which polices the small town of Bow Mar, came to the south Denver home of a woman in her 40s who works in financial services and accused her of stealing a package worth about $25 from a Bow Mar doorstep on 22 September. He cited Bow Mar's Flock camera records showing her truck in town between 11:52 and 12:09, said he also had the victim's doorbell video, refused to show it to her, and issued a petty-theft summons with a December court date. She had driven through Bow Mar to a tailor's appointment. Over about two weeks she gathered her truck's camera footage and GPS records and the tailor's camera images and sent them to the police chief, who wrote on 15 October that the summons had been voided. She describes emotional distress and fear for her career. The town said the officer had a reasonable belief at the time but would face unspecified disciplinary action; it did not apologise. No source reports that the cameras misread anything.
Contextual tracker case Low reported severity Internal Action
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 6 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026
Event date unknownUnited KingdomUnidentified chatbot
During a rape trial at Lewes Crown Court, a download of the complainant's phone revealed two documents containing a summary of the complainant's recollection of the night in question and 24 questions in the form of a cross-examination, with suggested answers. Asked about them, the complainant said: 'I had put stuff into AI to help me prepare myself for the court'. The trial judge (a Recorder) held that this was witness coaching, found that the defendant could not have a fair trial and stayed the proceedings as an abuse of process; the jury was discharged when the prosecution gave notice of appeal. On 4 June 2026 the Court of Appeal (R v FGD [2026] EWCA Crim 918) reversed the stay, holding that the trial process could deal with any prejudice, and directed a retrial at the earliest opportunity because the allegations were 'now of some age'. The defence did not accept that the documents were AI-generated; the appeal proceeded on that basis. The court warned that witnesses should be firmly discouraged from using AI to prepare their evidence and that, for complainants in sexual-offence cases, doing so may expose their online activity to wider and more intrusive investigation.
Core concern Medium reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownUnidentified image tool
SM Entertainment said on 28 September 2026 that illegal AI-generated images synthesising the likeness of YoonA (Im Yoon-ah), singer and actor of Girls' Generation, and false claims built on them had been made and spread on social media and online communities. Korean outlets describe images showing her apparently pregnant with a man placing a hand on her belly (his face blurred, per Star News). The agency said it had collected evidence from fan reports to its KWANGYA 119 channel and monitoring, had already filed a criminal complaint, and would respond without leniency or settlement, warning that making, posting or re-sharing the images could breach Korean defamation, portrait-rights and sexual-crime (false video) provisions.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026
Event date unknownUnited StatesUnidentified image and video tool
The Sumner County (18th Judicial District) District Attorney's Office said a 30-year-old Portland, Tennessee man was sentenced in Sumner County Criminal Court in September 2026 to 30 years in the Tennessee Department of Correction, to be served without probation, parole or early release. According to the prosecutors, he used artificial intelligence to place the faces of children onto images and videos of nude people and of people engaged in sexual acts, then exchanged the material with a Canadian resident for real child sexual abuse material. Canadian authorities found messages and material connected to him after arresting the person he was communicating with and alerted US law enforcement; a joint investigation by Portland police, Homeland Security Investigations, the FBI and the TBI led to his arrest in November 2025. He was also charged with tampering with evidence after investigators said he deleted material before officers entered his home to execute a search warrant. The children whose faces were used are not identified, their number is not reported, and the reports do not say which AI tool was used or which offences he was convicted of.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 28/09/2026
14 Aug 2021 to 14 Mar 2024United StatesSt. Louis mugshot recognition (SMRT)
Christopher Gatlin was arrested on 14 August 2021 for an assault at the St. Charles Rock Road MetroLink station after a joint St. Louis County and city team uploaded a grainy, blurry surveillance photograph from a bus into the St. Louis Mugshot Recognition Technology System, a facial-recognition tool that searches stored mug shots (more than 500,000 uploaded, the suit says per the Post-Dispatch; more than 250,000 per Biometric Update via Hoodline), and built the investigation around the resulting match together with a witness identification; he was charged with first-degree assault and held roughly 17 months (the Post-Dispatch says almost two years), a county judge suppressed the witness identification as unconstitutionally suggestive, and prosecutors dismissed the charges on 14 March 2024 (Post-Dispatch; Hoodline citing Biometric Update; Bloomberg Law). Gatlin sued St. Louis County, the City of St. Louis and named officers in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri on 13 January 2025; on 15 October 2025 the court denied the city's motion to dismiss and granted a detective's motion only as to one count; on 13 August 2026 the court allowed a second amended complaint adding Amazon Web Services, which the complaint says supplied the Rekognition program the system used; the county, city and officers answered on 27 August 2026, AWS's response was extended to 21 September 2026 and on 17 September it moved for a further extension to 28 September (no ruling on the docket when read), and a jury trial is set for 1 November 2027 (CourtListener docket). Amazon told the Post-Dispatch that its terms of service prohibit the use of its facial recognition technology in criminal investigations and that it would fully investigate any information that emerges in the litigation. The ACLU lists Gatlin among fourteen people known to have been wrongfully arrested in the US because police relied on erroneous facial-recognition results.
Contextual tracker case High reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources · Added 26/09/2026
Jul 2026South KoreaUnidentified image tool
Jeju Dongbu police announced on 23 September 2026 that a student at a middle school on Jeju had been referred to prosecutors without detention on 17 September for violating the Sexual Violence Punishment Act (filming with a camera or similar device). The student's phone was voluntarily submitted by his guardians and forensically examined; the examination found footage relating to some teachers and some sexual composites, and the student admitted the conduct. News1 reported that the student was booked for filming a teacher's body with his phone during a school field trip around mid-July 2026, that police found the offending had continued for several months with multiple victims, and that police found no indication the composites had been distributed. Police told Seoul Shinmun that there are more victim teachers than the one first reported but declined to give a number because the teachers are still teaching at the school and disclosure could cause secondary harm; that some suggestive composites were found and material causing shame was included in the charges; and that, contrary to earlier suggestions, no student at the school was a victim. The Jeju teachers' union questioned whether the full extent of the harm had been established, saying the victim teachers had themselves seen footage involving several students yet no compulsory seizure was made; police say the voluntary submission and forensic examination secured the necessary evidence. According to the union, two months after the case came to light the victim teachers are receiving hospital treatment and counselling while going to school every day; on 14 September they gave police victim statements without a lawyer and on 17 September attended the regional teachers' rights protection committee without support from the education office or the school safety mutual-aid association; they wrote and filed the criminal complaint themselves; substitute teachers are hard to find so they have used only three or four of 16 days of special leave; and the mutual-aid association proposes 3.3 million won in legal fees for all victim teachers together, payable after the case ends. The victim teachers requested meetings with the superintendent on 1 and 3 September without success, and a third written request was sent to the superintendent's office on 21 September; the union is running a petition until 2 October for severe punishment and support. Police said they had told the education office that the teachers need support such as treatment costs, rest and sick leave.
Core concern High reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources · Added 23/09/2026
16 May 2026United StatesGemini (reported)
On 16 May 2026 two teenage sisters (14 and 15) and a friend took a Lyft home from Red Reef Park in Boca Raton, Florida. Their father, Bert Gor, was then charged a $75 damage fee after the driver told Lyft's customer service the girls had left a mess. When Gor asked for proof, the photo he was sent carried a Google Gemini watermark that one daughter recognised, showing the image had been AI-generated. Lyft agreed the image was fake, reimbursed the charge and permanently removed the driver from its platform.
AI relation unknown Low reported severity Involving minors Internal Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources · Added 17/09/2026
14 Jul 2025 to 24 Dec 2025United StatesClearview AI facial recognition (reported)
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
1 Aug 2024 to 1 Oct 2024United StatesFACES facial recognition
In August 2024, Robert Dillon, a 52-year-old self-employed commercial crabber from the Fort Myers area, was arrested at his San Carlos Park home on a third-degree felony warrant for the attempted luring of a child at a Jacksonville Beach McDonald's in November 2023 — a crime he had no part in. The warrant rested on a 93%-confidence result from FACES, the Face Analysis Comparison and Examination System maintained by the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office, run against low-resolution cell-phone photos of a surveillance screen, plus a restaurant employee's photo-lineup identification. Dillon spent a night in jail and bonded out against his truck's title; prosecutors dropped the charges in October 2024 after work-alibi evidence, but it took about a year to expunge the arrest and remove his mugshot. In June 2026 the ACLU filed a federal lawsuit (M.D. Fla.) against Jacksonville Beach, the Jacksonville sheriff and the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office, calling Dillon one of at least 14 known wrongful arrests from police reliance on facial recognition since 2019.
Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources · Added 15/09/2026
1 Oct 2024 to 1 Aug 2025United StatesUnidentified facial recognition system
Javier Lorenzano Nunez was arrested in October 2024 for the 1998 murder of Sarah Carr after investigators ran the old suspect's MVD photo through facial recognition databases, got 250 possible matches and zeroed in on him — with Phoenix police publicizing the arrest in a press release and a special video. Charges were dismissed without prejudice in August 2025 after forensic evidence, including DNA and fingerprints, excluded him. His lawsuit alleges Phoenix police knew from a 2017 fingerprint analysis that his prints did not match, and ignored a 2007 Puerto Rico lead on the original suspect with the same name, date of birth and social security number. He spent nearly a year in jail. The federal suit against the Phoenix Police Department and the Maricopa County Attorney's Office alleges gross negligence, false arrest, false imprisonment and defamation.
Contextual tracker case High reported severity Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources · Added 15/09/2026
2 Jun 2026 to 4 Jun 2026United KingdomGrok
In early June 2026, social media posts and the AI chatbot Grok falsely identified former Hampshire police constable Christi Hill as one of the 'primary officers shown' in bodycam footage of the December 2025 arrest of Henry Nowak, who died after being stabbed. Hill had left the force in April 2024 — more than a year before the murder — and says the misidentification stems from a national police bravery award photo being misattributed. After 'endless threats' and 'threats of violence' she is hiding in a safe house. BBC Verify separately obtained evidence that serving officer Tristan Parsons, also wrongly accused online, was not in the country at the time; the Home Secretary said a misidentified male officer had to move out of his home. Hampshire Constabulary confirmed an unrelated officer was misidentified and received death threats.
Contextual tracker case High reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources · Added 15/09/2026
Nov 2025South KoreaUnidentified image tool
On 10 September 2026 the Seoul Northern District Court sentenced a 30-year-old Chinese national doctoral student to 18 months in prison for habitually producing manipulated sexual images of seven women who worked in his university research laboratory. Investigators found 1,141 files made over about six months from November 2025, and search records for ways to bypass the safeguards of the generative AI Grok; the court found no evidence of distribution. A lawyer for five of the victims said they continued to suffer fear, trauma and distress. Prosecutors had sought three years and public disclosure of his identity, which the court declined.
Core concern High reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources · Added 15/09/2026
22 Jun 2026IndiaGemini
On 22 June 2026 in Bengaluru's KR Puram area, 25-year-old J. Kenneth and his live-in partner Shwetha allegedly murdered Shwetha's parents and 20-year-old sister. Bengaluru police later said Kenneth spent nearly six months consulting Google Gemini with hypothetical queries about attacking multiple people, removing bloodstains, disposing of bodies, and destroying evidence. Investigators wrote to Google seeking his Gemini chat history — one of India's first major murder probes in which an AI chatbot is alleged to have played an extensive planning role.
AI relation under review Critical reported severity Criminal Charges
Legacy assessment: credible · Causal attribution alleged · Added 31/07/2026
1 Dec 2025Event location unknownPerplexity
Joseph Neal Riley, a 75-year-old retired neuroscientist in Seattle, died in late 2025 after delaying recommended treatment for chronic lymphocytic leukemia for roughly a year. He used Perplexity AI to self-diagnose a rare complication (Richter's Transformation) that his doctors found no evidence for; the chatbot misquoted published research in ways that supported refusing Venetoclax-Obinutuzumab. His son, AI critic Benjamin Riley, documented the case in a first-person Substack essay and it was later featured by the New York Times.
AI relation under review Critical reported severity Media Coverage
Legacy assessment: credible · Causal attribution alleged · Added 31/07/2026
Jan 2026Event location unknownGrok
Jess Asato’s solicitors report that Grok was used to make non-consensual sexualized images of her in January 2026. They announced a High Court claim against xAI on 3 June. These are the claimant’s representatives’ accounts; liability has not been established by the evidence reviewed here.
Core concern High reported severity Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 14/06/2026