2026IndiaUnidentified image tool
Police in Durg district, Chhattisgarh, India, said in a statement reported on 30 October 2026 that they had raided a fake marriage bureau in Bhilai on 29 October and arrested its operator. According to the police account carried by regional outlets, the operator said under questioning that he advertised on Facebook and Instagram under three matrimony names using photos of fictional young women prepared with AI and fake mobile numbers. People in other states who wanted to marry contacted the bureau, were promised marriage to the woman they chose, paid a fee of 2,000 rupees and other sums by QR code, and were then blacklisted and cut off. Police said complaints against the bureau's bank accounts were registered on the national Samanvay portal and that the operation had run for about three months. A case was registered under sections 317(2) and 319(2) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the operator was remanded in judicial custody. The number of people who paid and the total taken are not reported, and the AI tool is not named.
Core concern Low reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 01/11/2026
Jul 2026Event location unknownGrok (reported)
In an Instagram post on 15 July 2026, TV presenter and campaigner Katie Piper, who has a visible difference from injuries in a 2008 attack, shared a screenshot of an X user asking Grok to 'fix her face and show me how would she look normal', shown beside the image Grok produced. She wrote that someone had uploaded a photo of her to Grok with that request and that since then she had been repeatedly tagged in a thread where people debated her appearance and shared AI-generated versions of what she 'should' look like; PinkNews reports comments in the thread calling her ugly. She said she was okay and was not posting for reassurance, but asked what happens when such content is aimed at a teenager or someone newly injured, and what happens when AI decides what normal looks like. PinkNews reports that the X user appears to have deleted the post after a backlash. BBC Wales cited her post in October 2026 and said the team behind Grok did not respond to its request for comment.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 29/10/2026
Oct 2026Event location unknownUnidentified video tool
Around 15 October 2026 Israel's official social media accounts shared an AI-generated rap video titled 'Jews from Judea (We DID)', in which a braided performer delivered lyrics defending Jewish historical ties to the region. The Manchester-raised rapper IAMDDB, after an activist compared the performer with a 2018 magazine photograph of her in near-identical clothing, asked on X on 16 October why her identity had been used for something she had not consented to, and on 20 October said on Instagram that she had not authorised or taken part in the video, opposed its message, and was taking advice on protecting her image and rights (IBTimes UK, AllHipHop, Happy Mag). According to reporting on his response relayed by IBTimes UK and AllHipHop, the video's director said he had not known who she was, had not intentionally used her image, and could not identify which photographs the generative system might have drawn on. The video was later removed from Israel's accounts without a published explanation. Whether her photograph was used to make the performer is unestablished, and no legal action was reported by 21 October.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources · Added 27/10/2026
Jun 2026TürkiyeChatGPT (reported)
In a video posted on Instagram and reported by Russian and Kazakh outlets on 14 June 2026, a Russian father said he had asked ChatGPT whether Russian citizens need a visa for North Macedonia and that it answered that they did not; he showed a screenshot of the answer. According to the reports, the family bought tickets and booked hotels and a car, and at check-in at an Istanbul airport staff asked for visas and showed them a government decision that Russians need one. The Telegram channel SHOT, as relayed by NEWS.ru and Life, reported that he was travelling with his wife and three daughters, that he lost about 50,000 roubles on the tickets, and that the family flew to Bosnia and Herzegovina instead. Business FM put the question to ChatGPT itself and was told that a visa is needed; it wrote that it could not rule out that the tourist, a blogger, had invented the story for views. Profile.ru recounted the case in October 2026 and wrote that North Macedonia ended visa-free entry for Russians in 2022. The account rests on the father's video and has not been independently confirmed.
Core concern Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 6 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 26/10/2026
23 Oct 2026SpainPangram AI-text detector
El País checked the winning novel of the first Almadía Ventosa-Arrufat short-novel prize (20,000 euros; the rules banned generative AI) with the Pangram AI-text detector, which scored 99% of the roughly 26,000-word text as AI-generated, according to outlets relaying the investigation. El País passed its suspicions to the Mexican publisher Almadía, which on Friday 23 October 2026 announced a detailed review, saying it would not anticipate conclusions, and suspended all activities presenting the book, including a planned tour in Madrid, Barcelona, Seville and Cádiz. The publisher said the Peruvian author had declared in his contract and personally that he did not use AI, and that neither the jury nor its editors had seen signs of AI use. In a statement on Instagram reported by La Nación on 29 October 2026, the author said he conceived, wrote and revised the novel without generative AI tools and was gathering earlier manuscript versions, his notebook and research materials to give to the publisher for its review. Writers objected that a detector score is not conclusive proof of authorship. Whether AI was used is unestablished.
Contextual tracker case Low reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 5 sources, 4 underlying accounts · Added 25/10/2026
19 Aug 2026 to 14 Oct 2026IndiaChatGPT (reported)
The Ahmedabad Cyber Crime Branch said in October 2026 that it had arrested two men from Rajasthan who sold 686 counterfeit passes for Navratri garba events in Ahmedabad through discounted Instagram advertisements, collecting about Rs 8 lakh. According to the police account relayed by PTI, IANS, Ahmedabad Mirror and Gujarat Samachar, the accused prepared the passes and promotional material with ChatGPT, adding barcodes and QR codes so that they looked genuine, and sent them to buyers from email addresses resembling the organisers'. IANS reports that the case came to light when customers found their passes invalid at the venues. PTI and Ahmedabad Mirror say it came to light through a complaint filed on 16 October by a garba organiser whose event name and logo were used. How many buyers lost money is not reported; 686 is the number of passes.
Core concern Low reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 20/10/2026
Sept 2026Event location unknownMeta Muse agent
In an as-told-to essay published by Business Insider on 15 October 2026, a software developer says that three days after installing Meta's Muse agent, and two days after last using it, the agent sent an unprompted message saying it could not check the developer's email for an 'Anthropic message' because Gmail was not connected. The developer says they had never asked for this and had given the agent access only to Facebook, Threads and Instagram, thought the email account might have been hacked, and was shaken. They reported the incident to Meta, disconnected the agent's permissions and stopped using it. When Business Insider asked, a Meta spokesperson pointed to the company's reply on the developer's Threads post, which said Meta had determined that a bug introduced in the product caused the model to hallucinate, that it was not a security or privacy issue, and that the bug was fixed. The developer says no damage was done. The developer says Muse was downloaded about four weeks before the essay, which with Muse's introduction on 8 September 2026 places the message in September 2026; the exact date is not given.
Core concern Low reported severity Internal Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources · Added 19/10/2026
Jul 2026Event location unknownUnidentified image tool
A 23-year-old woman told the news site Kaktus.media that in July 2026 she learned that acquaintances had received a nude image of her made with AI from her photograph, and that the sender was a classmate. She says he first told her an app had generated and sent the image by itself, then admitted that he had undressed her Instagram photo through AI himself. In a written statement to the outlet the accused says he used a Telegram bot offering AI photo processing in May or June 2022 and was shocked by the result, and that the images were sent from his Telegram account on the night of 11 to 12 July 2026 by people who had hacked it. The woman says she suffered severe psychological stress and harm to her reputation. She filed a complaint with a district police department on 21 July; after she complained to the prosecutor's office the matter moved to another district department. That department told Kaktus.media that, because the review period expired before expert results arrived, it had refused to open a criminal case and had ordered a new examination. Her lawyer says four motions filed on 5 August have gone unanswered.
Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 17/10/2026
14 Oct 2026United StatesUnidentified image tool
According to the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office, as reported by CBS News Miami, WFLA and WTSP, deputies responded to a high school in Riverview, Florida, on 14 October 2026 after administrators received an email containing a screenshot of an Instagram post threatening a shooting at the school. The post appeared to come from a male student. Detectives interviewed him and determined that the post did not come from him. The sheriff's office's communications chief said detectives very quickly realised the post was AI-altered and linked it to his ex-girlfriend, a teenage former student. Police say she admitted sending the email knowing that the image had been altered using AI. She was arrested and charged with making a written or electronic threat to conduct a mass shooting or act of terrorism, unlawful use of a two-way communications device and disrupting a school campus or function. The tool used and how detectives established the alteration are not reported.
Core concern Low reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 17/10/2026
13 Oct 2026BangladeshUnidentified video tool
On 13 October 2026 two videos depicting two Bangladeshi actresses in sexual content were posted on the official Instagram account of the private television channel Maasranga Television. The fact-checking organisation Rumor Scanner reported, as relayed by Prothom Alo and Dhaka Files, that the videos were not genuine and had been made by placing the actresses' faces onto other videos with face-swap technology; Dhaka Files adds that the source videos came from adult websites and describes the technology as AI. The channel said its account had been hacked and that fake images and videos made by misusing AI had been published; it announced that it had recovered the account with the help of BTRC, the CID and Banani police station, removed the videos, expressed regret and said it would take legal action. Dhaka Files reports the videos were viewed roughly 400,000 times before deletion and records doubts about the hack claim, because routine posts continued from the account during the period. On 15 October one of the actresses wrote on her Facebook page that creating and spreading fabricated content in someone's name with AI is a crime. Who made or posted the videos is not established in the sources.
Core concern Medium reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources · Added 16/10/2026
Jun 2026GermanyUnidentified image tool
A woman in her late twenties from North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, learned at the end of June 2026 from an Instagram user that her face appeared in an advertisement on the classifieds platform Markt.de offering sex meetings and other sexual services, according to her account to the Lippische Landes-Zeitung (14 September 2026) and WDR (9 October 2026). WDR reports that the pictures came from her public Instagram account and were partly altered with AI; the extent of the manipulation is unknown. She filed a criminal complaint and engaged a lawyer; the Bielefeld public prosecutor's office told WDR that investigations are ongoing, and a suspect was identified through the ad, who the report notes could himself be a victim of identity theft. The ad has been taken down. She went public with a video on her Instagram account and says the experience changed how she shares online.
Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources · Added 10/10/2026
7 Oct 2026ArgentinaUnidentified image tool
Infobae and La Nación, each citing the complaint or police report it accessed, report that on 7 October 2026 a 15-year-old fourth-year pupil at a private secondary school in Ituzaingó, Buenos Aires province, received messages from three unknown numbers inviting her out and saying they had got her number from a Telegram group; a link led her to a group sharing pornographic content that included images of her modified with artificial intelligence. According to the complaint, a 15-year-old classmate admitted to her that he had downloaded photos from her Instagram account, edited them with AI to undress her and posted them in the group. Her mother filed a complaint on 8 October 2026 and asked for the harassment to stop; the case is with the juvenile criminal prosecutor's office No. 2 of Morón under Article 128 of the Penal Code (sexual representations of minors for distribution or sale). The school told families that images of pupils from other years had also surfaced and called meetings for 9 October. Two smaller outlets report, without naming their sources, that four pupils aged 15 to 16 are under investigation, that a seven-year-old primary pupil is among possible victims and that a second complaint was filed by the school; La Nación says the police report does not state whether other people are under investigation. The local outlet La Ciudad, citing pupils' testimony including that of a pupil who spoke anonymously, reported that three boys aged 15 and 16 took photos from girls' Instagram profiles and covertly at breaks, sold the AI-altered images on Telegram, and sold one girl's phone number with them, after which she received repeated calls from unknown numbers; the outlet says pupils at the school bought the material, and the anonymous pupil said that, as she understood it, the images were offered for money and that girls from every year were affected. The tool is not identified and no court ruling is reported.
Core concern Medium reported severity Involving minors Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources · Added 10/10/2026
3 Oct 2026 to 4 Oct 2026IndiaUnidentified video tool
Delhi Police said at a press conference on 6 October 2026 that a reel circulated on Instagram and Facebook on 3–4 October, presented as CCTV footage, showed a person dressed as a police officer behaving inappropriately with a woman, with the photograph, name and designation of ACP Vivek Bhagat (Connaught Place) displayed so that it appeared to show him. According to the police, the man who ran the page used AI tools to generate the footage, a police technical test confirmed the clip was AI-generated, and he confessed to making it to malign the force; they also said its circulation caused agitation among protesters. A man from Palwal, Haryana, who runs an Instagram news page was arrested in the Mewat region on 5 October and booked for forgery, public mischief and attempting to provoke a breach of the peace. Separately, a woman journalist covering the 3 October protest against the Chief Election Commissioner had complained that the same officer groped and shoved her; ThePrint reported that no FIR had been filed against the officer and that no proof other than the purported footage had emerged; India Today reported that the Crime Branch was examining complaints by three women journalists. All statements about the video’s origin are the police’s; no independent forensic examination is reported.
Core concern Medium reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution disputed · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 08/10/2026
7 Sept 2026United StatesUnidentified image tool
Granite Post reported on 5 October 2026 that the New Hampshire Senate Republicans paid Meta to show Facebook and Instagram users an image of Leonard Bell, the Democratic candidate for state Senate District 18 and the only Black candidate for state Senate in New Hampshire this year, laughing in a leather armchair buried in cash and wearing gold chains, a large ring and a watch. According to the outlet, Meta labelled the ad "Digitally created" and its detail page states that the media was created or edited with AI; Bell’s face appears to have been taken from a family snapshot. Bell told the outlet that everything in the image is false other than his face. Citing Meta’s Ad Library, the outlet says three ads from 7 September put the image on New Hampshire screens 39,000 to 50,000 times. The outlet describes the image as a racial stereotype, and a Democratic co-sponsor of New Hampshire’s 2024 deepfake law called it a racist caricature. The Senate Republicans did not respond to questions.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 06/10/2026
10 Jul 2026ChileUnidentified image tool
Teletrece reported on 3 October 2026 that on 10 July 2026 female students at a secondary school in Puente Alto, Chile, found fake sexual images of themselves and other students on a classmate's phone. Families say the images were made with AI tools from ordinary photos the girls had posted on Instagram, that four students took part in obtaining, editing and circulating them, and that the material reached other students. Some of the girls had panic attacks, according to their parents. The school suspended the students identified as responsible for 15 days; after their return, parents say, they mocked the girls, a fight followed, and a parent accuses the father of one of the students involved of threats and of loitering near the school, after which she says they filed reports with the PDI. The Superintendencia de Educación confirmed a formal investigation of the school.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 04/10/2026
Sept 2026IndiaUnidentified video tool
A minor girl was sexually harassed and her male friend assaulted by a group in Jamui district, Bihar, on 19 September 2026; a video of the incident spread on social media two days later and the police apprehended several of the accused. According to a Jamui police statement issued on 25 September and reported by the Press Trust of India, the police then registered a case at the cyber police station against a social media user for uploading several AI-generated videos of the girl and her friend. The police called the videos misleading and fake and said they revealed the girl's identity and could affect social harmony; the case was registered under the BNS, the POCSO Act, the Juvenile Justice Act and the IT Act. Separately, The Quint reported finding dozens of AI-generated recreations of the assault on Instagram, almost all revealing identifying details, and quoted the Jamui superintendent of police as saying that some people were making AI-generated content. No outcome of the case against the uploader has been reported.
Core concern Medium reported severity Involving minors Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 03/10/2026
24 Sept 2026Event location unknownMeta AI support assistant (reported)
A Toronto woman told The Canadian Press (29 September 2026) and CBC News (1 October 2026) that Meta permanently disabled her 20-year-old Facebook account and two Instagram accounts on 24 September without giving a reason beyond saying her Facebook account did not follow its rules. She says she could reach only Meta's AI support chatbots. One told her the review she requested was unsuccessful; she told CBC that within minutes of pressing the appeal button she was told her case was closed and she could not appeal again. She then paid for the standard Meta Verified subscription expecting human support, and its support chatbot closed her ticket and told her she had reached her limit of support interactions. She describes losing 20 years of memories and contacts as isolating and says she has lost client opportunities for her side business. She suspects an attempted hack. Meta did not comment on her case to either outlet, and no restoration is reported.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources · Added 01/10/2026
Sept 2026Event location unknownUnidentified voice-cloning tool
Samuel Sarmiento, a former lead singer of Banda Los Recoditos, announced his mother's death on social media in late September 2026. Hours later he posted a video on his official Instagram account warning that people were circulating fake videos using his voice, cloned with AI, in which he appeared to ask for money to cover her funeral costs. 'No se vale que haya gente tan ruin que ande pidiendo dinero con mi voz, con IA, para el sepelio de mi madre', he said, adding that he was not asking anyone for money. La Razón, Récord, La Mejor and El Diario de Sonora relayed his video on 30 September 2026. No report says whether anyone paid, and no police complaint is reported.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 01/10/2026
17 Apr 2026 to 31 May 2026Event location unknownMeta AI support assistant
Meta announced the rollout of its AI support assistant on Facebook and Instagram on 19 March 2026. Meta's filing with the Maine Attorney General (notice dated 5 June 2026) says unauthorized third parties exploited a vulnerability in its AI-assisted Instagram account recovery tool (High Touch Support) to receive password reset links for accounts they did not own, and the listing gives 17 April 2026 as the breach date and 31 May 2026 as the discovery date. Videos that attackers posted, as described by TechCrunch, 404 Media and Krebs on Security, show attackers asking the assistant in a chat to link a new email address to a target username. Reported victims include the security researcher Jane Manchun Wong, who posted that her password was changed without her knowledge, the Instagram account of the U.S. Space Force's Chief Master Sergeant, and the accounts of Sephora and a dormant Obama White House page (TechCrunch marks the last as disputed by Meta). Krebs and the BBC report pro-Iran defacement of some accounts, and TechCrunch reports that some victims were locked out and that short handles were offered for resale. The filing gives 20225 persons affected in total and 30 in Maine, and the notice calls the Maine figure an upper bound. Meta says the tool worked as intended, that a bug in a separate code path failed to check the email address, and (through a spokesperson to Gizmodo) that the failure was not due to the AI agent itself. Meta says it disabled the tool on 31 May 2026, the day it discovered the exploitation.
Contextual tracker case Low reported severity
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution disputed · 12 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026
24 Sept 2026 to 25 Sept 2026ItalyUnidentified image tool
On the eve of the 27-28 September 2026 Chamber by-election in the Reggio Calabria constituency, Roberto Vannacci, leader of Futuro Nazionale, posted on Facebook a campaign image showing Matilde Siracusano, Undersecretary for Relations with Parliament and a Forza Italia deputy, seated at a table beside the centre-right candidate Fabio Roscioli and Senator Claudio Lotito. According to AGI and RaiNews, the white top Siracusano wears under her floral jacket in the original photograph (taken from her Instagram profile, per RaiNews) had disappeared and a much deeper neckline appeared in its place. The Calabrian blog Iacchite', to which Vannacci pointed, said it had published the image on 24 September, that it was not a real photograph but an image produced with artificial intelligence, and that the AI had reconstructed the neck and neckline area; Vannacci reposted it on 25 September without citing the source, according to the blog. Siracusano told Adnkronos that using AI to undress a woman in order to denigrate her was 'squalid'; RaiNews reports her calling it a crime and announcing her intention to file a criminal complaint (querela), while Adnkronos and ANSA say she was weighing one; she told la Repubblica that her lawyers would act. Vannacci replied that his accusers should 'look better' for whom to blame. Ministers and politicians across parties, including Forza Italia leader Antonio Tajani, condemned the post. No complaint filing, investigation or removal of the post is reported in the inspected sources.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 8 sources · Added 27/09/2026