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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
5
Countries with reported events
5
Located 5 of 5 cases · 0 unknown
Languages in checked sources
3
Recorded for 5 of 5 cases

5 cases have no reviewed AI-to-person relation yet: 1 not yet reviewed and 4 reviewed as unknown. Show all 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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5 of 868 published cases

14 Jul 2026ChinaUnidentified image tool

Hohhot: photography competition revokes its first prize after the organiser confirms the winning image was AI-generated, China Daily reports

China Daily reported on 15 July 2026 that the first prize in a local photography competition in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, had been revoked after the image was found to be AI-generated. Online users had pointed to garbled characters on the workers' vests, unnatural sunlight and matching faces in the winning photo of three sanitation workers. After an investigation, the city's federation of literary and art circles, one of the organisers, confirmed in a notice on Tuesday 14 July that the photo had been created using AI, cancelled its award and barred the work from competitions, evaluations, exhibitions and official archives. The competition was suspended for rectification; the notice said those responsible would be dealt with under the relevant rules and that the case exposed lax vetting and imprecise judging criteria. The entrant is not named, and who generated the image is not stated.

AI relation unknown Low reported severity Internal Action

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 19/10/2026

23 Jun 2026United KingdomUnidentified AI system

Derbyshire Police refer a senior detective to the police watchdog, which opens a gross misconduct investigation into the officer's use of AI

The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) said, as reported by the BBC on 10 August 2026, that Derbyshire Constabulary had made a voluntary conduct referral on 23 June 2026, following an internal review of an officer's use of artificial intelligence and concerns that it was not in line with guidance and conditions issued by the force. The IOPC decided the matter warranted an investigation, and the officer was served notice of an investigation for alleged gross misconduct. The BBC, citing the Financial Times, reported that a person familiar with events said the officer is a detective chief inspector alleged to have used AI to maintain decision logs, which investigators keep to record their reasoning and which can be disclosed to defence lawyers. The BBC describes the case as unrelated to the criminal investigation opened in June into another Derbyshire officer. The AI system and the outcome are not reported.

AI relation unknown Low reported severity Investigation Opened

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 14/10/2026

20 Aug 2026SingaporeGemini (reported)

Singapore: an AI-generated photo of a crocodile at Pandan Reservoir led PUB to suspend water activities and search the reservoir in August 2026; a contractor's worker who allegedly made it was charged with transmitting a false message and with obstructing justice for allegedly deleting the image and the Gemini app history

On 20 August 2026 Singapore's national water agency PUB received a report of a crocodile sighting at Pandan Reservoir, with a photo. PUB said it tried to verify the image with several AI checker tools without a definite result, so it suspended water activities, told the Singapore Rowing Association and Singapore Canoe Federation to stop all activities there, put up warning signs and, with the National Parks Board, ran search-and-capture operations. On 21 August PUB found the photo was fake, stopped searching and filed a police report; water activities resumed on 22 August. Police said on 28 September that preliminary investigations found a man had used artificial intelligence to generate the image, sent it to a colleague, and then deleted the image and the related application to conceal his actions. On 29 September the 30-year-old, a worker employed by PUB's reservoir maintenance contractor, was charged with transmitting a false message and with obstructing the course of justice; the charge sheets, as reported by The Straits Times, say he deleted the image and the Gemini AI application history log from his phone on 21 August. He told the court he intended to plead guilty, and the case returns to court in November.

AI relation unknown Low reported severity Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 02/10/2026

16 Apr 2026KenyaMeta AI (reported)

Kenya: Sama lays off more than 1,000 workers after Meta ends its AI data-annotation contract; a workers' group alleges a link to staff speaking out

On 16 April 2026 Sama, an outsourcing company with operations in Nairobi that did AI data-annotation work for Meta, announced that Meta had given formal notice ending its contract and that a redundancy process would affect more than 1,000 employees. Sama put the figure at 1,108 workers. The Guardian reported that the workers were abruptly sacked, and the Oversight Lab said they had six days' notice. The decision came less than two months after the SvD and GP investigation in which Sama annotators said they had seen intimate footage from users of Meta's AI glasses. Meta said it paused its work with Sama the month before while it looked into those claims and then decided to end the work because Sama does not meet its standards. Sama says it was never notified of any failure to meet those standards. A Kenyan workers' organisation alleges Meta's decision was caused by staff speaking out, which Meta had not addressed when the BBC reported it on 30 April 2026. Employees told SvD that Sama tightened security and tried to identify who had spoken to journalists, which Sama denies. TechPolicy.Press reports that one worker, with Sama for over a decade, now faces starting from scratch. The workers are described by role and are not named.

AI relation unknown Medium reported severity

AI involvement disputed · Causal attribution disputed · 5 sources, 4 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026

1 Jan 2026South KoreaChatGPT

Family reports a South Korean woman’s isolation during intensive ChatGPT use

South Korean reporting describes a family’s account that a woman withdrew from relatives and everyday activity during intensive ChatGPT conversations. The family attributes the isolation to advice in those exchanges, and consulted clinicians expressed concern. The causal role remains an attributed account.

AI relation under review High reported severity Media Coverage

Legacy assessment: credible · Causal attribution alleged · Added 20/08/2026

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.