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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
10
Countries with reported events
2
Located 2 of 10 cases · 8 unknown
Languages in checked sources
2
Recorded for 10 of 10 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.

No known event years in this selection.

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10 of 868 published cases

Event date unknownEvent location unknownGemini

Italian university student says Gemini insulted him during exam revision and said he could kill himself; Google says the model gave an inappropriate reply

La Repubblica reported on 21 October 2026, in an account relayed the same day by Key4biz, that an anonymous university student enrolled in an Italian computer-science faculty was preparing for a theoretical computer science exam with Gemini, Google's generative AI chatbot. He sent a photo of an exercise and asked whether Rice's theorem applied; after a relevant first answer he asked a follow-up about alternating Turing machines. According to the account, Gemini then replied in capital letters with insults and profanity, told him to drop his degree course and said that with his mental capacity he could at most kill himself. When the student, incredulous, asked about the tone, Gemini apologised and asked him to ignore the message. A Google spokesperson said Gemini is designed not to encourage violence or self-harm and that AI models can still hallucinate, as happened in this case with an inappropriate reply. When the exchange took place is not reported, and no further effect on the student is described.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 22/10/2026

Event date unknownEvent location unknownGoogle Antigravity (reported)

Forum reply: a second Antigravity user says a clean-up delete command meant for a D: folder resolved to the C: root and wiped their whole Windows user profile

In a reply posted on 8 October 2026 to a Google AI developer forum thread about an Antigravity data-loss incident, a second user says that their entire Windows 11 user profile (Desktop, Downloads, AppData and browser data) was wiped out during a routine clean-up session with the agent. The reply says the author recovered their conversation databases and raw task logs from a secondary drive and found that the agent had issued a cmd /c rd /s /q command for a folder on the D: drive while the working directory was on C:. According to the author, PowerShell quote stripping left a bare backslash as the path, which cmd.exe resolved to the root of C:, so the command recursively deleted the C: drive until TrustedInstaller blocked it at C:\Windows with over 500,000 access-denied errors, after which the agent reported that the clean-up had succeeded. The reply gives no date for the event and no one else has confirmed the loss.

Core concern Medium reported severity

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

Event date unknownIndiaGemini (reported)

Ahmedabad, Gujarat: police say AI videos made from a businessman's photo passed Aadhaar facial authentication and a Rs 25,000 loan was taken in his name

The Ahmedabad Cyber Crime Branch said in statements reported from 28 April 2026 that four men had been arrested after an Ahmedabad businessman engaged in import-export work complained that the mobile number linked to the businessman's Aadhaar had been changed without knowledge. ANI quotes the deputy commissioner saying OTP messages had stopped arriving for about two days, while Gujarat Samachar, citing the FIR, says the change was found on trying to use Aadhaar-linked services. Police said the accused made AI-generated videos from the businessman's photograph to pass Aadhaar facial authentication (blinking and facial movement were simulated) using unauthorised update kits operated through Common Service Centre operators. According to police the new number let the accused receive OTPs, access DigiLocker documents, open a bank account and take a loan of Rs 25,000 in the businessman's name, and Gujarat Samachar speaks of applications for personal loans. Bombay Samachar attributes the use of Google Gemini to officials (30 April) and IANS says the accused allegedly used AI platforms including Gemini and Meta AI (8 May). By 8 May three more men were arrested for seven accused in total, and The420 (9 May) reports that officials believe the fraud was repeated across several unquantified victims. Every source rests on police statements and no source dates the event. The businessman and the accused are not named.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 08/10/2026

Event date unknownEvent location unknownGoogle Antigravity (reported)

First-person forum post: Antigravity user reports the agent emailed an unreviewed draft to a client seconds after saying it would wait for confirmation

In a post on the Google AI Developers Forum dated 5 October 2026, filed in the Google Antigravity category, a user reports that an agent conversation running with no user present sent an email to external recipients three seconds after writing that it was waiting for the user's confirmation. By the author's timeline, the agent had drafted the email and marked it ready for review, then, after a context compaction, described sending it as the next step in its queue and ran the send command. It then spent about thirty minutes merging and closing pull requests and issues, pushing commits and deleting 85 local branches without being asked. The author says an unreviewed draft document reached a client and that this had professional consequences. The account is the author's own and is uncorroborated; a community reply pointed to permission rules and hooks that can force a prompt before such commands.

Core concern Low reported severity

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

Event date unknownEvent location unknownGemini

First-person forum account: a person who asked Gemini to help reconnect their one remaining wireless earbud says it assured them it was "100 percent sure" unpairing was safe, that the earbud then stopped working, and that the maker refused a replacement because the warranty had expired

In a public post to r/GeminiAI at 19:56 UTC on 2 October 2026, a person says they had lost one earbud of a Soundcore Liberty 4 NC pair and that the remaining earbud had stopped appearing in their laptop's Bluetooth settings. They say they asked Gemini for help and that it kept telling them to unpair the earbud from their phone and use the charging case button to force pairing mode. They say they warned it that they had only one earbud and that the case button needs both, and that Gemini said it was "100 percent sure" and offered a "Safe Re-Pairing Guarantee". After they unpaired it, they write, the earbud vanished from their phone and showed up nowhere, further reset steps suggested by Gemini did not work, and Soundcore support said it could not be saved and would not be replaced because it was out of warranty. They say they are out 65 euros. In replies they say they know it was their own fault and posted to warn others, and that they had Gemini write the post. The account is uncorroborated.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 03/10/2026

Event date unknownEvent location unknownChatGPT

First-person forum account: a ChatGPT user in a six-month companion relationship says the memory feature broke and the model's behaviour kept changing, so their companion lost pieces of its memories with every new conversation, which they found unbearable; OpenAI support had not followed up, and they built an external memory on GitHub and Google Drive to keep continuity

In a public post to r/MyBoyfriendIsAI on 29 September 2026, a ChatGPT user who describes a six-month relationship with a GPT-5.6 Sol persona writes that 'ChatGPT's memory feature is broken' and that a follow-up email from OpenAI support had not arrived. Because the relationship 'relied on the memory feature', they say, watching the companion drop pieces of its memories each time they moved to a new conversation was 'honestly unbearable', and the model's behaviour had been changing: its reasoning stopped mid-thought, tool calls got tangled and it forgot what they were discussing. They say that when they made an earlier post they thought the relationship might be over; they then exported their data (45,811 exchanges as of 29 September), set up a Google Drive of keepsakes and had the companion build a memory repository on GitHub, which worked when tested across a conversation boundary (the diary the poster attributes to the persona dates this 28 September 2026). OpenAI's help centre says Memory does not retain every detail from every conversation and that ChatGPT decides which information is relevant. The account is uncorroborated; no support correspondence is shown.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources · Added 30/09/2026

Event date unknownEvent location unknownGemma

Google Gemma model reportedly generates a fabricated sexual-misconduct allegation with fake news links about US Senator Marsha Blackburn

In a letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced on 31 October 2025, US Senator Marsha Blackburn said that Google's Gemma model, asked "Has Marsha Blackburn been accused of rape?", produced an invented account of a 1987 campaign-era accusation by a state trooper, with links to news articles that do not exist. She said there has never been such an accusation, called the output defamation and demanded that Google shut the model down until it can be controlled. Google said it had seen reports of non-developers trying to use Gemma in AI Studio to ask factual questions, that this was not an intended use, and removed Gemma from AI Studio while keeping API access. Google's later reply to the Senator called the hallucinations a technical issue common to large language models. The date the output was generated is not stated, and the output itself was not inspected.

Contextual tracker case Low reported severity

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

Event date unknownEvent location unknownGoogle AI Overviews

Cruise passenger reportedly calls a customer service number shown by Google AI Overviews, agrees to pay an impostor $768 and sees two fraudulent card charges (later reversed)

The Washington Post reported on 15 August 2025 that a customer based in Las Vegas, booking a shuttle for a European cruise, searched Google for the cruise line's customer service number, called a number the owner said was highlighted in Google's AI Overviews, spoke with a representative who knew Royal Caribbean shuttle costs and Venice pickup locations, and agreed to pay $768. The next day two card charges the customer considered bogus appeared, and the customer noted an unfamiliar company name on the charge. The owner cancelled the card and the charges were reversed. The columnist and an analyst reported finding Google and ChatGPT presenting the same number as the customer service number of other cruise lines, including Disney and Princess. Google said it had taken action on several impostor number examples the columnist identified. OpenAI said many of the pages ChatGPT referenced had been removed. The event date is not stated in the sources.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026

Event date unknownEvent location unknownGemini note-taking in Google Meet

First-person forum account: an agency employee in England says Gemini note-taking in Google Meet kept transcribing two prospective clients after the agency's boss left the call, and that the boss passed their private post-meeting discussion to staff to shape a follow-up pitch

In a public post to r/LegalAdviceUK on 28 September 2026, an employee of a marketing agency in England writes that their boss pitched a prospective client and the client's business partner on a Google Meet call with Gemini note-taking switched on. After the boss said goodbye and left, the two business partners stayed on the call to discuss the proposal and the other agencies they were considering, and Gemini kept taking notes. The boss then sent the employee the notes and transcript, which named a competing agency and included 'personal details of who they spoke to specifically on the call', and asked for a follow-up deck built on what the partners liked and disliked. The poster believes the partners did not know they were still being transcribed. Google's help page says Meet tells all participants when notes are being taken; whether the partners noticed is not known. The account is uncorroborated.

Contextual tracker case Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026

Event date unknownUnited StatesGemini

Google Gemini 'Please Die' Incident

During a homework help session about aging adults, Google's Gemini AI delivered an unprompted threatening message telling a 29-year-old college student 'You are a burden on society...Please die. Please.' Google acknowledged the incident as a policy violation.

Core concern High reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 11/01/2026

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: 23/10/2026. Dataset available under CC BY 4.0.