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NOPE

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

Explore incidents Our scope and evidence

In this selection

Published cases
1
Countries with reported events
1
Located 1 of 1 cases · 0 unknown
Languages in checked sources
1
Recorded for 1 of 1 cases
0Core concern
AI communicated, acted for, depicted or impersonated 0Contextual cases
AI made a decision or claim about someone 1Unknown or pending relation
0 legacy rows pending · 1 explicitly unknown

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.

0cases with a recorded lawsuit outcome 0cases with a recorded regulatory response 0cases involving minors

Response counts currently use each case’s principal recorded outcome. Further proceedings may be described in its account.

When events happened

0 cases without a known event year

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.

1 2026
Reported severity Low
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1 of 174 published cases

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6 Aug 2026United KingdomFacewatch live facial recognition (deployed by Sainsbury's)

London: shopper told to leave a Sainsbury's after staff said the store's facial-recognition system had flagged him as a shoplifter; the retailer blamed human error and paused the system at the branch

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

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: 22/09/2026. Dataset available under CC BY 4.0.