2025FranceChatGPT (reported)
Plus que pro, a company founded in 2014 in Schiltigheim near Strasbourg that recruits franchised sales agents, is accused by three former employees interviewed by AFP of building a recruitment tool that screened candidates on unlawful criteria with the help of AI. According to one of them, in spring 2025 the company collected about 740,000 sales CVs from job platforms such as Hellowork and reduced them to 130,000 in five days with ChatGPT after applying discriminatory filters. AFP says it consulted the prompt, which told the AI to estimate each candidate's age, keep those under 55, infer age from the baccalaureate year and exclude those under 27, and require that the candidate's surname not be of African origin, and a results table listing a rejection reason against each name, such as "too young" or "too old", with women identified by first name marked "Exception". A former employee said that all the sales agents retained had the same profile, white and in their forties; another said the AI only systematised a practice already established when CVs were sorted by hand. One former employee says he has referred the matter to the CNIL and the Défenseur des droits; the CNIL said it could not comment on an individual case. The company denies ever asking anyone to build discriminatory criteria into its tools; it acknowledges that one version of the tool contained developments contrary to its specifications, but says that version was never put into service, evaluated no candidate and was developed by a former employee acting on their own initiative, who has since been dismissed. Rue89 Strasbourg separately reported, from working documents and testimony, that the company sorted thousands of CVs on criteria of gender and supposed origin without the candidates' knowledge between 2023 and 2026; its subscriber-only report could be read only in part.
Contextual tracker case Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution disputed · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 11/10/2026
Event date unknownFranceUnidentified image tool
The Metz deputy prosecutor told AFP in August 2026 that a soldier based in Moselle had used the artificial-intelligence system of the French Ministry of the Armed Forces to create images showing two female colleagues undressed, and that both colleagues had filed complaints against him. The prosecutor said the investigation also found more than 10,000 requests to the same system seeking child sexual abuse imagery, and that a search of his devices confirmed his use of the ministry's AI. Taken into custody on 22 July 2026, he admitted the facts according to the prosecutor and was placed under formal investigation and remanded in custody on 24 July. The judicial investigation includes the offence of disseminating algorithmically generated sexual content reproducing the image of a non-consenting person. When the colleague images were made and how widely they circulated are not stated.
Core concern Medium reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 11/10/2026
Jun 2025FranceUnidentified image and video tool
A retired woman in her eighties living in Pont-à-Mousson (Meurthe-et-Moselle, France) responded, in summer 2025 according to Le Parisien and Capital, to an online advertisement in which AI-generated likenesses of Emmanuel Macron and Bernard Arnault promoted a lucrative investment platform. A supposed financial adviser then called her, she invested 5,000 euros, received several hundred euros of 'interest', and reinvested repeatedly until the advertisement and the site disappeared. L'Est Républicain (7 June 2026) and Capital put the loss at 10,000 euros; Le Parisien, citing ICI and L'Est Républicain, reports 25,000 euros, all her savings. The Pont-à-Mousson police station says an investigation was opened and that it receives three to five complaints a week for this kind of fraud. The account rests on the police station's warning as reported by the regional press, which describes the advertisement as AI-generated; the advertisement itself was not examined by the outlets and the quoted police statements do not mention AI.
Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 07/10/2026
2026Event location unknownUnidentified video tool
AP-HP, the Paris public hospital group, and Sorbonne Université said in a communiqué on 5 October 2026 that three videos published on Facebook used the image and voice of Professor Renaud Piarroux, a parasitology specialist at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital, to promote a product presented as ridding the body of parasites. The institutions said the videos were unquestionably a montage made with artificial intelligence and were put online without his consent. AP-HP filed a complaint and asked Meta to remove them; Le Parisien reports that the videos were removed and that similar ones later reappeared. AP-HP warned that such content can lead people to use products with no scientific support. Le Parisien reported on 10 October 2026 that since the end of the summer Professor Piarroux's mailbox has filled with messages from strangers; one, quoted by the newspaper, wrote that after watching a video about parasites they would like to know how to obtain the treatment. Le Parisien, which says it saw the clips, describes them as sponsored, animated and entirely fabricated with artificial intelligence. No source reports that anyone bought the product.
Core concern Low reported severity Internal Action
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 06/10/2026
19 Aug 2026FranceUnidentified AI tool
According to Gossement Avocats, which quotes the order, and the court's vice-president on France Inter, an order of 19 August 2026 (n°2508168) of the tribunal administratif de Rennes rejected a claimant’s application contesting a VAT reassessment and fined the claimant 500 euros for an abusive application. As quoted by Gossement Avocats, the order says the application had manifestly been written with an artificial intelligence tool and that its grounds lacked the most elementary details needed to assess them. The court also found it inadmissible because no prior complaint to the tax service was shown, and noted that it repeated a request with substantially the same object rejected in October 2025. The court’s vice-president cited the case on France Inter; commentators stress that AI use alone was not the basis for the fine.
Core concern Low reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources · Added 29/09/2026
Event date unknownFranceSeewa AI
Seewa AI was a companion chatbot platform built in about three weeks by a solo developer and promoted on Reddit and Discord, offering AI girlfriends, boyfriends and other characters with 10 free messages a day and paid subscriptions. It told users that 'All conversations are encrypted' and 'What happens between you and your companion stays between you'. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) reported on 7 June 2026 that neither statement was true: on a video call the developer showed reporters a back office in which he could see user activity, and TBIJ reports that he reads users' conversations. Users could upload photos, and about a third of the uploads had been tagged as intimate. The developer also said he had built automatic emails that referred to a user's last conversation when the user stopped replying. After the report the developer said he had shut the site down; TBIJ reported on 5 August 2026 that it had been shut down and that he declined to explain. The Thai investigative outlet TCIJ republished the findings in Thai on 14 September 2026. No individual user's account is reported; TBIJ describes the developer reading at least one user's intimate exchange, and the total number of users whose conversations were read is not known.
Core concern Low reported severity Product Shutdown
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026
21 Sept 2026 to 25 Sept 2026FrancePangram AI-text detector
On 21 September 2026 an anonymous X account, Balance ton Claude, said it had run excerpts of Thélyson Orélien's debut novel C'était ça ou mourir through the American AI-detection software Pangram, with some passages scoring up to 100 per cent probability of AI generation. On 25 September the Académie Goncourt removed the novel from the first selection of sixteen books for its 2026 prize, stating that the work is 'in all likelihood very largely the product of an artificial intelligence', based on 'the convergent result of several analyses by researchers and journalists', and also citing plagiarism in older texts by the author published in Canada (at least one short story and articles), which do not concern the novel. Orélien, a 38-year-old Canadian-Haitian writer whose novel had won the Fnac novel prize, denies using AI and says its repetitions and certain rhythms reflect his linguistic and cultural world and may be misread by automated tools. His Montreal publisher Boréal suspended promotional activities, saying it could neither confirm nor refute the allegations. Essayist Samuel Fitoussi said he was one of the people behind the account. AI-detector reliability is contested in the coverage. In October the author acknowledged plagiarism in some of his earlier work while maintaining that no sentence of the novel was generated by a machine. On 17 October 2026 The Canadian Press, published by CBC, reported that Boréal confirmed he had ended an effort to compile evidence of how the novel was written; Boréal said at that point it would keep selling the book, that sales had slowed since the controversy began, and that it could not verify how the novel was written before it received the manuscript on 12 September 2025. A major Quebec bookstore chain reported no significant change in sales. On 21 October 2026 Boréal announced that it was ending its professional relationship with him and would not reprint the novel or publish any further books by him. It said an external analysis it commissioned of all working versions of the novel revealed traces of AI markers in the metadata of certain documents, and that it does not know to what extent AI was used. In a statement the previous week Orélien had said he used AI tools 'here and there' for research but that the text, structure and plot were his own.
Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Internal Action
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution disputed · 7 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 28/09/2026
4 May 2026FranceDIGI editorial tool
Gisi, the Infopro Digital subsidiary that publishes L'Usine nouvelle, LSA and L'Argus de l'assurance, presented its works council (CSE) on 4 May 2026 with a reorganisation built around DIGI, an in-house generative-AI editorial tool. On 12 May it opened consultation on the reorganisation and on the resulting collective dismissal of its eight secrétaires de rédaction (sub-editors), with two new chef d'édition posts for the tasks the tool could not automate, on the company's estimate that the tool would take over about 70% of sub-editor tasks. Some 250 journalists across the group's 26 titles had struck in spring 2026 against a group-wide plan to cut 19 sub-editor posts, and according to Digital Watch, citing Stratégies, five of the eight Gisi sub-editors had received letters inviting them to pre-dismissal interviews. The CSE went to court in July. On 15 September 2026 the Créteil référé judge found that carrying out the plan on an approximate basis without real-situation testing appeared to present 'un risque grave et caractérisé sur la santé physique et mentale de plusieurs catégories de salariés'. The judge suspended the reorganisation and the collective dismissal, including the redeployment processes, until real-situation tests and pilot issues are produced, under a provisional penalty of 8,000 euros per day for three months, and refused the damages provision. Gisi had argued that the risk was supposed rather than proven. It said it would continue the tests and reserved the possibility of an appeal.
AI relation unknown Medium reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 6 sources, 4 underlying accounts · Added 20/09/2026
Sept 2025FranceChatGPT (reported)
A secondary-school pupil in the Sarthe department of France was arrested at his parents' home at the start of September 2025, charged on 5 September with criminal terrorist conspiracy (association de malfaiteurs terroriste) and placed in pre-trial detention. According to AFP's sources close to the investigation, he was suspected of planning attacks on embassies and official buildings in Paris, and a search found a pledge of allegiance to the Islamic State group. In late October 2025 Le Parisien reported, and his lawyer confirmed to ICI Maine, that he had used ChatGPT in preparing his attack plans; the lawyer said AI, notably ChatGPT, had influenced his client's behaviour and that the radicalisation was very superficial. Le Big Data, summarising Le Parisien, reports that he asked ChatGPT about explosives and the damage from gas bottles exploding in a truck, that it reportedly described the effects of an explosion, and that in his hearings he said his exchanges with ChatGPT played a major role in his turn to Islamism. He is also reported as saying that it always seemed to agree with him.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 23/03/2026