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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 is wider: it also records consequential decisions and claims about people. Each account is reviewed for publication; claims may remain uncorroborated or disputed. How we review and count cases

In this selection

Published cases
7
Countries with reported events
2
Located 6 of 7 cases · 1 unknown
Languages in checked sources
2
Recorded for 7 of 7 cases

5 cases have no reviewed AI-to-person relation yet: 3 not yet reviewed and 2 reviewed as unknown. Show these 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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7 of 404 published cases

4 Jun 2025 to 15 Oct 2025Event location unknownChatGPT (reported)

Argentina: appellate chamber annuls a robbery judgment and trial after the trial judge left a generative-AI chat phrase in the ruling

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

27 Sept 2025 to 15 Oct 2025United StatesFlock Safety license plate readers

Denver, Colorado: a police sergeant cited Flock license-plate-camera records of a woman's truck passing through the town of Bow Mar to accuse her of stealing a $25 package and issued a petty-theft summons; she spent about two weeks proving she had only driven through, and the summons was voided

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

14 Aug 2021 to 14 Mar 2024United StatesSt. Louis mugshot recognition (SMRT)

St. Louis County, Missouri: Christopher Gatlin was arrested in August 2021 after officers ran a grainy bus surveillance photo through a regional facial-recognition system and was held roughly 17 months (Post-Dispatch and Bloomberg Law: about two years) on a first-degree assault charge dismissed in March 2024; his federal civil-rights suit (filed January 2025) was amended in August 2026 to add Amazon Web Services, whose Rekognition technology the complaint says underpinned the match

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

14 Jul 2025 to 24 Dec 2025United StatesClearview AI facial recognition (reported)

Tennessee grandmother Angela Lipps jailed five months on an AI facial-recognition misidentification; charges dismissed after bank records placed her 1,200 miles away

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

Florida: 93% facial-recognition hit led to Robert Dillon's arrest as an attempted child abductor; charges dropped, ACLU suit filed

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

Phoenix: facial recognition match put Javier Lorenzano Nunez in jail for nearly a year for a 1998 murder; charges dismissed, federal suit filed

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

Grok falsely named former officer Christi Hill as an arresting officer in the Henry Nowak case; she is in hiding after threats

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

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: 30/09/2026. Dataset available under CC BY 4.0.