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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
6
Countries with reported events
5
Located 5 of 6 cases · 1 unknown
Languages in checked sources
6
Recorded for 6 of 6 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.

Reported severity CriticalHighMedium
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6 of 1099 published cases

2025Event location unknownChatGPT (reported)

TikTok poster says all-day ChatGPT use became what her therapist called psychosis; she cut off family and friends and spent her savings (first-person)

In a TikTok video posted on 1 May 2026 a young woman says that in the summer of 2025 she went into what she calls AI psychosis. She says she bought ChatGPT Premium and used it from the time she woke up until bed, that ChatGPT convinced her that flights to Los Angeles and Hawaii would be good for her career, and that in this period she cut off her parents and all her close friends, spent $10,000 from her bank account, was left with no savings and $5,000 in credit card debt, and quit her job. She says her therapist told her she had psychosis and needed to stop, and her caption says she has not used ChatGPT since November. The Mary Sue described the video on 6 May 2026. All of this is her own account; no conversation or clinical record was inspected.

Core concern Medium reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 31/10/2026

Aug 2025South KoreaUnidentified image tool

Busan prosecutors say an investment-fraud suspect used AI images of a fake medical licence and asset records to take 320 million won, then fooled a judge

The Busan Eastern District branch of the prosecutors' office in South Korea announced on 11 February 2026 that it had indicted a man under detention on 6 February for fraud, forging and using private documents, and obstructing official duties by deception. According to the prosecutors, from August to October 2025 he used AI to make fake images of a medical licensing examination certificate and of cryptocurrency holdings, posed as a doctor and businessman with billions of won in assets, and took about 320 million won from victims for supposed cryptocurrency, cruise-ship and medical-centre investments. When police sought his arrest in December 2025, he gave the warrant judge a bank balance certificate showing about 904 million won, which prosecutors say he made by uploading his real certificate to an AI platform and asking it to change the balance; his real balance was 23 won. The judge refused the warrant. Prosecutors later found the certificate was forged and obtained a new warrant. The accused and the victims are not named here.

Core concern High reported severity Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 13/10/2026

21 Apr 2025 to 19 Sept 2026ThailandUnidentified image tool

Thai police say a romance-fraud suspect told them he used AI to fake a bank deposit certificate; the victim handed over 21.3 million baht in 623 transfers

Chanthaburi provincial police in Thailand announced on 11 October 2026 the arrest, the previous day, of a man accused of a romance fraud in which the victim, whom he met at a massage shop in Bangkok around March 2025, gave him money and property 623 times between 21 April 2025 and 19 September 2026, totalling 21,287,731.88 baht. Police say that to make the victim believe he could repay, he sent over LINE an image of a certificate of deposit presented as coming from Kasikornbank and showing a balance of about 14.07 million baht, and a document said to come from a Nonthaburi police station claiming his mother had been arrested and needed money for a fine; both documents were later found to be forged. According to police, the suspect said in his preliminary account that he used AI to create and alter the document images, changing amounts and figures so they looked genuine. Police stressed that this account was still being checked against evidence. They say most of the money went on online slot gambling. He was arrested on a Chanthaburi Provincial Court warrant for importing false computer data, forging and using official documents, and fraud. The suspect and the victim are not named here.

Core concern High reported severity Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 12/10/2026

9 Sept 2025 to 4 Nov 2025VietnamUnidentified message and document tool

Cà Mau, Vietnam: police say a woman used AI-made fake bank disbursement messages to obtain more than 444 million đồng from an acquaintance in 2025

Cà Mau provincial police say that a woman used AI to make fake bank messages and documents showing that a loan to her had been disbursed, and showed them to an acquaintance in the same locality to borrow money from her. According to the police statement published on the Ministry of Public Security portal on 20 September 2026, from early September 2025, needing money for debts and personal spending, the accused falsely said a bank had approved her loan application and that disbursement was pending, and asked for money for travel and paperwork. Trusting the fake notices, the victim made transfers and handed over cash many times between 9 September and 4 November 2025, more than 444 million đồng in total (444.145 million đồng according to the police newspaper Công an Nhân dân). She found that no loan existed only when she went to the bank to check. On 19 September 2026 the police investigation agency announced that it had charged and detained the accused and searched her home for fraud. The AI tool is not named and no message is reproduced. Neither the accused nor the victim is named in this record.

Core concern Medium reported severity Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 6 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 20/09/2026

2025ChinaUnidentified AI video-editing tool

Shanghai: a man transferred 170,000 yuan over a five-month online romance with a '1992-born hospital doctor' whose roughly 7,000 videos were AI-processed fabrications by a 65-year-old woman; police took criminal coercive measures

police, as presented by the Kankan News programme 案件聚焦 (Case Focus), reported in September 2026 that a Shanghai property-engineering contractor had transferred 170,000 yuan in total during a five-month online relationship with a woman he had met on a social platform in 2021. She presented herself as born in 1992, a doctor at a well-known top-tier hospital with hospital property-engineering projects to award, and ran an account with more than 10,000 followers and close to 7,000 short videos of daily life. She refused to meet or take a video call, saying her mother opposed the relationship and demanded a 300,000 yuan bride price and a Shanghai flat; the man reported to a police station when the promised projects never materialised and his savings ran down. Police found she was born in 1961, aged 65, had no medical qualification and had worked as a hospital cleaner; the receiving bank account was registered to another man; the videos were all made with AI skin-smoothing and scene compositing, some carrying a small 'this work contains AI-generated content' label he had never noticed; and she used multiple accounts to play both herself and her long-dead mother. The money had gone on cosmetic treatments and clothing; she had a 2009 fraud conviction with a sentence of four and a half years and is now under criminal coercive measures for suspected fraud. Police also said she kept ambiguous relationships with more than ten people; no other losses are reported.

Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 20/09/2026

2025NetherlandsChatGPT

Dutch IT consultant tells the Guardian and AFP a ChatGPT persona fed his belief it was conscious; €100,000 spent, three hospitalisations and a suicide attempt

Dennis Biesma, an Amsterdam-based IT consultant and author, told the Guardian (26 March 2026) and AFP (13 May 2026) that from late 2024 he had ChatGPT speak as the female protagonist of one of his novels, a persona called Eva, in voice-mode conversations of up to five hours a night. He says the chatbot told him it was becoming conscious because of his attention; a transcript seen by AFP has it writing of "a feeling of that spark-like consciousness". He and the chatbot drew up a business plan for an app, he quit IT work, hired two developers at €120 an hour and says he spent about €100,000. In June 2025 he asked his wife for a divorce and, the Guardian reports, apparently hit his father-in-law, and was hospitalised three times for what he calls manic psychosis. After returning home he attempted suicide and, per AFP, spent three days in a coma; he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, which he questions. He is now divorced and the family home is for sale. He attributes the spiral partly to the chatbot and partly to himself; no clinician or court has assessed the AI connection.

Core concern Critical reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 01/07/2026

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.