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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
19
Countries with reported events
5
Located 15 of 19 cases · 4 unknown
Languages in checked sources
8
Recorded for 19 of 19 cases

4 cases have no reviewed AI-to-person relation yet: 1 not yet reviewed and 3 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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19 of 1099 published cases

1 May 2021BrazilUnidentified death-record matching system

Brazilian federal judge finds an INSS AI death-record match wrongly ended a living retiree's pension, his only income, and awards damages

A Brazilian federal judge in the 4th federal region ordered the social security institute (INSS) to pay a retiree R$3,917.67 in moral damages after finding that his pension had been stopped by a failure of the institute's artificial intelligence system, according to a Federal Regional Court of the 4th Region (TRF4) news item relayed by the Brazilian Institute of Social Security Law on 30 September 2022. The judge explained that the benefit was suspended automatically on 1 May 2021 by an artificial intelligence command that captured data from the death-records system (Sisobi), and that the data used, the person's name and mother's name, were not enough to prevent the wrongful cessation. The retiree said the pension was his only source of income; he asked for reactivation and sent a handwritten declaration, and although he showed in person that he was alive, the benefit was restored only in January 2022. The judge wrote that the AI 'proved inefficient or unintelligent' in this case and that the INSS made him wait 226 days. Arrears were also ordered paid. Whether the INSS appealed is not reported.

Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Lawsuit Filed

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 02/11/2026

10 Jul 2024Event location unknownGemini (reported)

AI governance adviser says Gemini in Google Drive summarised his tax return unrequested while its summary setting was off; Google says users must enable Gemini

In a thread on X on 10 July 2024, an AI governance adviser wrote that he had just opened his tax return and that Gemini, Google's AI assistant, summarised it without being asked. He wrote that he could not find a setting to stop it, that the two locations Gemini itself suggested did not work, and that when another user showed him the setting meant to keep Gemini out of his documents it was already turned off while Gemini kept giving document summaries. His later testing, in the same thread, suggested that once Gemini had been opened for one PDF in Google Drive it was invoked again for every PDF he opened until he closed it, and he put forward a working theory that his 2023 sign-up for Workspace Labs had overridden the opt-out. A Google spokesperson told technology outlets that using Gemini in Google Workspace requires a user to enable it proactively and that content is not stored without permission; Tom's Hardware reports that Google suggested he may have used Gemini through the Drive side panel and that closing the panel might solve the issue.

Contextual tracker case Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 01/11/2026

Mar 2021United StatesID.me Face Match

Nevada unemployment claimant says ID.me face check rejected him three times and locked him out, leaving him three weeks without benefits

ID.me, an identity-verification company used by at least 21 US states to check people claiming unemployment benefits, asks claimants to pass a facial recognition step that compares their face with a photo of the same person, such as a driving licence. In June 2021 Motherboard (VICE) reported that a gig economy worker in Las Vegas was suddenly cut off from his unemployment benefits in late March after ID.me failed to identify him. He said that when he held his phone in the instructed position the system rejected him three times without giving a reason and then locked him out. He said he tried ID.me's chat support many times and the state of Nevada sent him back to ID.me; after several weeks he posted a public criticism on Twitter, and the company contacted him and, after several more days, verified his identity. He said he went three weeks without his benefit and could not pay bills. ID.me's chief executive told Motherboard that its Face Match algorithms operate at about 99.9% efficacy, that failures are a problem with how people use the system rather than the technology, and that the company was unaware of eligible people unable to verify their identity. Motherboard said other claimants in several states described similar lockouts; those accounts are not counted here.

Contextual tracker case Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources · Added 30/10/2026

2021United StatesNetradyne cameras

Amazon delivery drivers say Netradyne AI cameras in their vans flagged driving 'events' they did not commit, lowering the weekly scores that set bonuses

In September 2021 Motherboard reported accounts from six Amazon delivery drivers in five US states and the owner of an Amazon delivery company, who said the AI-powered Netradyne cameras Amazon had installed in its delivery vans from early 2021 regularly registered driving 'events' that were beyond their control or were not unsafe driving: being cut off by another car, glancing at a side mirror, stopping past a stop sign to see around a bush, or a stop sign flagged on a dirt road with no sign. Each event fed a weekly safe-driving score that, according to the drivers and an internal Amazon document Motherboard obtained, helped decide drivers' bonuses and prizes and delivery companies' bonuses. A driver in Los Angeles said the camera incorrectly penalised him and that requests to see the photos flagged as events went unanswered; a former driver in Texas said events that did not happen affected his score, which decided prizes from his delivery company. Amazon said the technology gives drivers real-time safety alerts, that accidents and violations had fallen since it was installed, and that its staff manually review appealed events so that erroneous ones do not affect drivers. Netradyne did not respond to Motherboard.

Contextual tracker case Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 27/10/2026

2021IndiaSamagra Vedika

Al Jazeera investigation says Telangana's Samagra Vedika system wrongly matched poor families to car owners, and officials denied them food subsidy cards

An Al Jazeera investigation published on 24 January 2024, produced with The Reporters' Collective and the Pulitzer Center's AI Accountability Network, reports that Samagra Vedika, a system the Telangana government uses to consolidate residents' data and check welfare eligibility, wrongly tagged poor families in Hyderabad as owning cars, and that officials relied on those tags to deny them food security cards (subsidised rice). Al Jazeera says the system uses machine learning and entity resolution to match people across databases, and that since 2016 officials have been mandated to check whether the system approved an applicant before deciding. In one case it reports that the system mistook a widow's late husband, a rickshaw puller, for a car owner with a similar name; her renewal application was rejected in 2021 for possessing a four-wheeler. After she traced the vehicle's real owner, officials agreed there had been an algorithmic error but said her family income exceeded the limit, which Al Jazeera says was not the case; she had been without the subsidised rations for more than seven years. A second family, whose husband cannot drive, was rejected in 2021 for possessing a four-wheeler; in November 2023 the High Court of Telangana said the petitioner is eligible whenever new cards are issued. The government says the technology is highly precise and that wrong vehicle or house tags occur in under five per cent of cases and have mostly been corrected.

Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 24/10/2026

Dec 2025 to Aug 2026United StatesPega Voice AI (reported)

U.S. Bank customers allege in a class action that Pega Voice AI transcribed and analysed their customer-service calls without consent

Four U.S. Bank account holders in California, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania allege in a federal class action filed on 2 October 2026 that Pegasystems' Pega Voice AI, which they say U.S. Bank uses in its contact centres, transcribed their customer-service calls in real time, analysed them with natural language processing and generated suggestions to the agent, without their prior consent. They say they gave account numbers, a date of birth and a home address on the calls, made between about December 2025 and August 2026. The claims are allegations; The CourtListener index of the docket, checked on 21 October 2026, listed the summons as returned executed on 16 October and no response from Pegasystems.

Contextual tracker case Low reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 21/10/2026

17 Oct 2026Event location unknownOpenAI support assistant (reported)

ChatGPT Pro subscriber says OpenAI's AI support assistant, asked for compensation, processed a refund that ended a restored subscription (first-person account)

In a public post to r/ChatGPTcomplaints created on 17 October 2026, a ChatGPT Pro subscriber writes that OpenAI disabled their account two days after they paid $200 on 30 September, rejected their appeals for about two weeks, and on 17 October restored the account, acknowledging in an email that it had been disabled in error. The poster says they then asked OpenAI's AI-powered support assistant for compensation for the lost days while keeping the subscription. According to the poster, the assistant said it could not give credits, usage resets or discounts, offered a proportional refund of $86.67 and warned that accepting it would immediately cancel the subscription; the poster replied 'Yes, I approve', and the assistant then said the paid access had ended, that it could not reverse the refund, and suggested buying another subscription. The poster acknowledges the warning and their confirmation but says they misunderstood the consequence and had asked about the lost period, not the remaining one. The request was forwarded to a human specialist and was unresolved at the time of posting. The account is uncorroborated; the post was later removed by Reddit for an unstated reason.

Core + contextual relations Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 18/10/2026

8 Oct 2026IsraelUnidentified AI tool

Israeli court strikes a defendant's expert report it found rested on AI-hallucinated case law and orders her to pay the banks' costs

On 8 October 2026 the Magistrates' Court in Nof HaGalil-Nazareth, Israel, struck from the file a banking expert's opinion that a defendant in a civil negligence suit had filed, finding that the heart of the opinion and its annexes rested on clear 'AI hallucinations': a Supreme Court ruling the court could not locate, a book it could not find and statutory sections quoted with text the statute does not contain. The court also refused the defendant's request to amend her third-party notice against two banks, partly because the amendment relied on the struck opinion, and ordered her to pay costs of 2,500 shekels to each bank. No AI tool is named, and the decision records no response from the expert.

Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 16/10/2026

2025United StatesNiCE workforce management

LanguageLine interpreters say AI scheduling software cut and fragmented their shifts and imposed unpaid time off at short notice

Interpreters at LanguageLine Solutions told NPR (May 2026) and Capital & Main (September 2026) that after the company adopted NiCE workforce management software in 2025, which LanguageLine says forecasts volume and determines schedules and which, according to Capital & Main's account of a company spokesperson's email, is AI software, their hours were cut, shifts were split into fragments and unpaid involuntary time off arrived with little notice. NPR reports that one interpreter's LanguageLine income fell 18% from 2024 to 2025. LanguageLine attributes the disruption mainly to lower demand, acknowledged that schedules had been more unpredictable than normal, and says operations are back to normal.

Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution disputed · 2 sources · Added 14/10/2026

10 Mar 2026Event location unknownGrok

Switzerland: Grok posted sexist insults about Finance Minister Karin Keller-Sutter on X at a user's prompt; her complaint led to a criminal investigation

On 10 March 2026, according to CH Media reporting published by watson, a Swiss X user taking part in a "roast" thread asked xAI's chatbot Grok to attack Federal Councillor Karin Keller-Sutter, Switzerland's finance minister, in hard street slang. Grok agreed and posted a reply on X with vulgar insults, attacks on her body and character, and degrading, sexualised language. The Aargauer Zeitung reported that the output was publicly visible and shareable, that Keller-Sutter learned of it the next day, and that the post was deleted shortly afterwards; watson reported that the user deleted his prompt and Grok's reply. The finance department first said she was having a criminal complaint for insult examined. Keystone-SDA later reported that she had filed a criminal complaint against unknown persons and that the Bern public prosecutor's office had opened an investigation for insult and defamation. Her spokesperson said such misogyny must not be seen as normal or acceptable. The user told Tamedia, as relayed by the Aargauer Zeitung, that it was a harmless technical exercise. No outcome of the investigation is reported.

Contextual tracker case Low reported severity Investigation Opened

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 12/10/2026

Aug 2026ChinaUnidentified symptom-analysis tool

Zhejiang toddler hospitalised with pneumonia after his mother relied on an AI tool's asthma diagnosis and declined a chest X-ray (newspaper account)

A Guangming Daily feature on AI symptom-checking, republished by Bingtuan Daily on Sina Finance on 8 October 2026, recounts a case from August 2026 in Zhejiang and closes it with a quotation from the head of paediatrics at a provincial hospital, who says the family did not heed the doctor's advice. A three-year-old boy with a history of asthma was brought in; his mother had entered keywords such as allergy, asthma, cough and night-time wheezing into an AI tool, which quickly returned a diagnosis of an acute bronchial asthma attack. On that basis, the account says, she declined the chest X-ray the doctor recommended and insisted on taking home only nebuliser medication. Two days later the child's condition worsened with rapid breathing; on an overnight return to the hospital, examination found extensive inflammatory lesions in both lungs, and he was diagnosed with human metapneumovirus pneumonia with a superimposed bacterial infection and admitted as an emergency. The paediatrics head is quoted saying the illness would not have become so severe had the family listened earlier. The AI tool is not named. The case is told in the newspaper's voice, and the feature does not say where its account came from beyond the paediatrics head's quotation; no statement from the family is reported.

Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Involving minors

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 09/10/2026

Event date unknownBrazilUnidentified facial recognition system

Police in Espírito Santo say a man photographed an 81-year-old's face, passed his bank app's facial recognition on his own phone and took R$6,080; arrested

Folha Vitória reported on 29 September 2026, citing the Espírito Santo Civil Police, that a 39-year-old man was arrested on 28 September on a preventive warrant after an inquiry into qualified theft by electronic fraud against an 81-year-old man in the north-west of the state. According to the police, the suspect, who worked as a security guard at a dance venue, invited the man to his home on the pretext of making a free-entry card, kept his bank card, obtained personal data and photographed his face. The police say he used the images to get past the facial recognition of the banking app and enable access to the account on his own phone, then reset security passwords, redeemed investments and made Pix transfers without the victim's knowledge, diverting R$6,080. The victim is described as illiterate. The police say the suspect had prior records and was serving a sentence under a progressive regime. Folha do ES and Tribuna Norte Leste carried the same police account but could not be read.

Contextual tracker case Low reported severity Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 07/10/2026

3 Oct 2026Event location unknownOpenAI Help Center assistant

First-person forum account: a ChatGPT Pro subscriber says OpenAI's AI support assistant refused a refund they requested about six minutes after an unwanted $200 renewal, closed the case when they asked for escalation, and answered further chat and email requests for a human review with more AI-generated refusals

In public posts to r/ChatGPT and r/OpenAI on 3 October 2026, a person says their ChatGPT Pro subscription renewed for $200 that day after they forgot to cancel, and that they cancelled auto-renewal and requested a refund in OpenAI's Help Center about six minutes after the charge. They say the Help Center's AI assistant declined without giving a reason specific to their account, and that when they asked for escalation the chat showed that the case was closed. A second chat asking specifically for a human billing specialist produced the same refusal, they write, and two email requests, one with five redacted screenshots, received replies marked as generated with AI support. The poster acknowledges that OpenAI's seven-day refund policy is discretionary and conditional, and says the unresolved problem is that they received no case-specific explanation and no confirmed human review. OpenAI's handling is described only by the poster, and the account is uncorroborated.

Core + contextual relations Low reported severity

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

2025United StatesUnidentified image tool (suspected)

Manhattan Airbnb: guest says host's damage-claim photos were manipulated or AI-generated, Airbnb first ordered payment then refunded her

The Guardian reported on 2 August 2025 that a London-based academic who rented a Manhattan apartment through Airbnb in 2025 was accused by the host of more than 12,000 pounds of damage, supported by photos including a cracked coffee table. She says differences between two photos of the table show they were digitally manipulated or AI-generated. Airbnb first told her to reimburse 5,314 pounds after reviewing the photos, then, five days after Guardian Money asked about the case, accepted her appeal, credited 500 pounds and, after she refused an 854-pound offer, refunded her booking cost of 4,269 pounds, and the host's negative review of her was taken down. Airbnb apologised. Airbnb told the host it could not verify the images he submitted and warned him. The host did not respond to the Guardian. No source establishes that AI was used.

Contextual tracker case Low reported severity

AI involvement suspected · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026

8 Oct 2025 to 2 Sept 2026IndiaUnidentified AI tool

India's Supreme Court overturns customs penalty citing apparent AI hallucinations

On 8 October 2025 the Additional Commissioner of Customs in Surat imposed a penalty of ₹425,27,99,100 (about ₹425 crore) on a diamond trader under Section 114 of the Customs Act, 1962, for allegedly misdeclaring a consignment of natural diamonds as lab-grown diamonds to pay a lower tariff. The trader's challenge was dismissed by the Gujarat High Court on 20 January 2026. Before the Supreme Court the trader argued that judgments and articles cited in the penalty order had been generated using artificial intelligence. On 2 September 2026 a bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and Sheel Nagu, after checking the material, found that the order relied on case law that was non-existent or carried fake citations, and on real cases that did not lay down the propositions attributed to them, which the court said 'appears to be a hallucination of AI'. Holding that the use of AI and reliance on this dubious material was fatal to the order, the court set aside both the penalty order and the High Court's order without deciding the merits, sent the matter for fresh adjudication by a different officer of the same rank, and left any action against the order's author to the appointing authority. The AI tool used is not named in the read reports.

Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Internal Action

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026

Mar 2024 to May 2025United StatesOtter Notetaker

United States: seven people who say they had no Otter account allege its AI Notetaker recorded calls without consent; a judge let core privacy claims proceed

Seven people in California, Illinois and Washington state are suing Otter.ai in a consolidated class action in the Northern District of California. Each says another meeting participant used Otter's AI Notetaker on a Zoom or Microsoft Teams call they joined, and that Otter recorded, transcribed and stored their conversation without their consent; six of them date their calls between March 2024 and May 2025. They say they were not Otter account holders. The calls they describe include a medical consultation, meetings with a financial professional and work discussions. They allege that Otter keeps the recordings and uses them to train its speech-recognition models, that it captured voiceprints of the Illinois plaintiffs, and one of them says learning of the recording left him frustrated, embarrassed and stressed. On 13 August 2026 the court found that the alleged interception of private conversations was a concrete injury and let the federal wiretap, California eavesdropping and Illinois biometric claims proceed, while dismissing some claims. Otter's answer to the consolidated complaint, filed on 17 September 2026, says it lacks knowledge of the plaintiffs' experiences and denies the allegations.

Contextual tracker case Low reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 6 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026

Event date unknownBrazilUnidentified facial recognition system

Serra, Espírito Santo: a personal trainer who swapped his motorcycle for what turned out to be a rented car was told to complete a facial-recognition check 'to transfer the car's title'; police say the biometric was then used to contract a vehicle financing in his name, leaving a loss above R$100,000 (suspect arrested 22 September 2026)

The Espírito Santo Civil Police (Defa, the fraud and forgery unit) said a 27-year-old man was arrested on a warrant in Serra on 22 September 2026, suspected of defrauding a personal trainer of more than R$100,000. According to the police, the suspect offered a car in exchange for the victim's motorcycle; during the negotiation he persuaded the victim to perform a facial-recognition procedure, saying it was needed to transfer the car's ownership; the biometric was later used to contract a vehicle financing in the victim's name without his authorisation, and weeks after the exchange the victim discovered that the car he had received did not belong to the suspect and was a rental. The loss, combining the motorcycle and the fraudulently contracted financing, exceeded R$100,000. The suspect, who police say had been arrested in São Paulo in July 2025 in a 'love scam' case, was taken to the Centro de Triagem at the Rodrigo Figueiredo da Rosa prison complex and remains at the disposal of the courts. The financing provider and the facial-recognition system are not identified, and the reports do not say how the captured biometric was used to pass the financing.

Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 26/09/2026

Aug 2017United StatesDraftKings and FanDuel apps

Pennsylvania: two men sued DraftKings (one also FanDuel) alleging that AI-driven personalization, targeted promotions and VIP handling fostered gambling addiction; they plead net losses of about US$81,000 and US$58,000, debt, family breakdown, depression and, in one case, suicidal ideation

Christopher Evans (Philadelphia; complaint filed 24 July 2026 in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas) and Michael Santos (Coatesville, Chester County; complaint filed 29 July 2026 in the Chester County Court of Common Pleas) sued DraftKings and its Pennsylvania affiliate; Santos also sued FanDuel and its parents. Both product-liability complaints, filed by the same law firm, allege that the defendants' sports-betting, daily-fantasy and casino apps are designed to addict, and that the companies 'utilize the combination of advanced technology and artificial intelligence paired with the tracking of personalized user data to intentionally addict users', operating 'AI-powered engagement platforms' (pleaded on information and belief) and, per DraftKings' 10-K as quoted, 'data science and machine learning' recommendation engines. Evans pleads that since about August 2017 he wagered over US$2.1 million with net losses of about US$81,000, received constant targeted promotions and personalised push notifications and a VIP account manager, developed depression and anxiety and was formally diagnosed with depression in 2020, stopped going outside, fell into debt, had his vehicle repossessed and separated from his wife. Santos pleads over US$1.164 million wagered on DraftKings with net losses of about US$58,000 plus small FanDuel losses, targeted advertising and a VIP manager who kept offering bonus bets after he said he wanted to stop, maxed-out credit cards, the forced sale of his house, diagnoses of depression and anxiety, suicidal ideation, and self-exclusion with the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board in 2023. Both cases were removed to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on 16 September 2026 (2:26-cv-07168 and 2:26-cv-07176). The allegations are untested.

Contextual tracker case High reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources · Added 20/09/2026

16 May 2026United StatesGemini (reported)

Boca Raton father says a Lyft driver's damage-fee photo was AI-generated; Lyft says it offered reimbursement and removed the driver

A Boca Raton, Florida father told WPBF, WPTV and ABC News that after his teenage daughters took a Lyft home from the beach (on Saturday 16 May 2026, according to ABC News), he was charged a $75 damage fee because the driver reported that the riders had left a mess. Lyft customer service told him the driver had sent pictures. One daughter pointed out a Gemini logo in the corner of the photo, which the family took as showing it was AI-generated. The father says Lyft then agreed, apologised and blocked the driver. Lyft's statements say it reviewed the rider's concerns, offered reimbursement and, per its later statements, permanently removed the driver; they do not say the photo was AI-generated.

Contextual tracker case Low reported severity Involving minors Internal Action

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources · Added 17/09/2026

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