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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
14
Countries with reported events
4
Located 11 of 14 cases · 3 unknown
Languages in checked sources
4
Recorded for 14 of 14 cases

4 cases have no reviewed AI-to-person relation yet: 0 not yet reviewed and 4 reviewed as unknown. Show these 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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14 of 1101 published cases

1 May 2021BrazilUnidentified death-record matching system

Brazilian federal judge finds an INSS AI death-record match wrongly ended a living retiree's pension, his only income, and awards damages

A Brazilian federal judge in the 4th federal region ordered the social security institute (INSS) to pay a retiree R$3,917.67 in moral damages after finding that his pension had been stopped by a failure of the institute's artificial intelligence system, according to a Federal Regional Court of the 4th Region (TRF4) news item relayed by the Brazilian Institute of Social Security Law on 30 September 2022. The judge explained that the benefit was suspended automatically on 1 May 2021 by an artificial intelligence command that captured data from the death-records system (Sisobi), and that the data used, the person's name and mother's name, were not enough to prevent the wrongful cessation. The retiree said the pension was his only source of income; he asked for reactivation and sent a handwritten declaration, and although he showed in person that he was alive, the benefit was restored only in January 2022. The judge wrote that the AI 'proved inefficient or unintelligent' in this case and that the INSS made him wait 226 days. Arrears were also ordered paid. Whether the INSS appealed is not reported.

Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Lawsuit Filed

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 02/11/2026

Jan 2021United StatesHireVue (reported)

Massachusetts job applicant alleges CVS's AI-analysed HireVue video interview was an unlawful lie detector test; court let his claim proceed, then he settled

A man who applied for a supply chain job with CVS in Massachusetts around January 2021 says CVS put him through a HireVue video interview with questions about integrity, and alleges that HireVue sent the recording to a platform called Affectiva, which analysed his facial expressions, eye contact, voice intonation and inflection with artificial intelligence and fed a score to CVS. He sued CVS in a proposed class action under the Massachusetts Lie Detector Statute, alleging the interview was a lie detector test and that the online application lacked the notice of rights the law requires. He says he did not know the interview was a lie detector test and would not have taken part had he known. In February 2024 a federal judge in Massachusetts denied CVS's motion to dismiss the notice claim, finding a concrete informational injury; CVS had not challenged the other claims at that stage. A law firm commentary says he was not hired. In July 2024 he reached an individual settlement with CVS, whose terms were not reported. The allegations about the AI analysis were not tested in court.

Contextual tracker case Low reported severity Lawsuit Settled

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources · Added 02/11/2026

2024Event location unknownGemini (reported)

Brazilian court orders Google to pay R$20,000 after its AI falsely named a businessman as owner of a betting site, leaving him blamed for its scams

A civil court in Niterói, Rio de Janeiro state, ordered Google Brasil to pay a businessman R$20,000 in moral damages in a sentence dated 12 May 2025. The judge found it undisputed that the company's artificial intelligence had pointed to him in searches as the owner of a gambling platform called 7 Games, with which he had no connection, as the company register showed. The court found that the false information damaged his reputation: he was being held responsible for scams on the betting platform and received threats by email from its customers. The court had earlier granted an injunction to remove the association, and the sentence confirmed it. Google argued that it does not host the material shown in its results and only organises pages available on the web; the judge held Google responsible because the information came from its own platform rather than from a linked page. Conjur, a legal-news site, identifies the tool as Gemini and reports that the association began after an interview in which he recommended seven games; the sentence names no product. Whether Google appealed is not reported.

Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Lawsuit Filed

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 02/11/2026

2019Event location unknownSiri

Whistleblower says accidental Siri activations recorded private conversations heard by Apple contract graders; Apple apologised and later settled class suit

On 26 July 2019 the Guardian reported that contractors grading a small share of Siri recordings for Apple regularly heard confidential information. Its anonymous source, a contractor, said Siri was often activated by mistake, for example by the sound of a zip, and that these accidental activations captured private discussions between doctors and patients, business deals, apparently criminal dealings and sexual encounters, with location, contact details and app data attached. Apple told the Guardian that requests were not linked to users' Apple IDs and that less than 1% of daily activations were graded. On 28 August 2019 Apple apologised, said it had suspended human grading, and said audio would no longer be retained by default, grading would become opt-in and recordings found to be inadvertent triggers would be deleted. Device owners' class action, Lopez v. Apple in the federal court in Oakland, alleged that Apple recorded private conversations after unintended Siri activations and disclosed them to third parties. Apple agreed to pay $95 million while denying wrongdoing, and co-class counsel say the judge granted final approval on 16 October 2025.

Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Lawsuit Settled

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources · Added 29/10/2026

30 Apr 2024BraziliFood facial recognition check

Brasília labour court orders iFood to pay delivery worker who says its face check flagged his own photos as another person and got him banned; iFood appeals

A delivery worker in Brazil's Federal District who had worked for the iFood app for about three years says he was banned from the platform in April 2024 shortly after completing the app's daily facial recognition check. iFood support told him another person had tried to access his account; when he asked to see that person's photos, they were his own. G1 reports that the only difference from his registration photo was his hair, which he was growing out. In a judgment reported in June 2025, a Brasília labour judge, applying a default because iFood had not filed a defence in time, accepted as true that the contract was suspended through iFood's fault, that he suffered financial and psychological losses, and that the facial recognition tool had a racist failure, and ordered iFood to pay R$60,000 in moral damages. iFood denies that its facial recognition procedure analyses racial characteristics and has appealed. The account was restored during the case. No appeal ruling has been reported.

Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources · Added 27/10/2026

13 Apr 2024BrazilUnidentified facial recognition system

Aracaju (Brazil): facial recognition falsely matched a football fan to a wanted man; police led him from the stands and the state suspended the system

During the half-time interval of the Sergipe state football championship final at the Batistão stadium in Aracaju on 13 April 2024, military police took a personal trainer from the stands to a police room after the stadium's facial recognition system flagged him as a man with an open arrest warrant; he was searched and questioned and released once police confirmed he was not the person sought (G1, his lawyer and the military police). Sergipe's governor publicly regretted 'the failure of the facial recognition tool' and suspended its use until a new protocol was adopted. In June 2024 the man sued the state for 550,000 reais in moral damages; the state argued that the Aracaju municipality, not the state, had contracted the system. In December 2025 the judge rejected that preliminary objection, according to Mangue Jornalismo, which read the court file. No final judgment is reported.

Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 24/10/2026

7 Jun 2024NetherlandsChatGPT

Dutch sub-district judge used ChatGPT to estimate solar-panel lifespan and power prices in a neighbour dispute, then rejected the homeowner's damages claim

A homeowner in the Netherlands sued his neighbour, whose permitted roof extension shaded his solar panels, claiming more than 21,000 euros for lost yield and investment. In a judgment of 7 June 2024 (ECLI:NL:RBGEL:2024:3636), the sub-district judge of the Rechtbank Gelderland, sitting in Nijmegen, held that the neighbour had to bear half of the damage and then calculated the damage, estimating the average lifespan of solar panels from 2009 and the current average electricity price partly with the help of ChatGPT, as the judgment states. Using a lifespan of 27.5 years, about 15 remaining years and a price of 0.30 euros per kWh, the judge put the yield loss at about 2,250 euros and the maximum damage at 3,323.40 euros; half of that was less than the 3,300 euros the neighbour had offered, so the claim was rejected and the homeowner, who had refused the offer, received nothing and was ordered to pay costs. On the neighbour's counterclaim, the judge assumed, again partly with ChatGPT, that insulation material the homeowner had thrown into water was no longer usable, and ordered him to pay damages of 2,619.02 euros in total. The judgment does not say what was asked or answered, and whether it was appealed is not reported.

Contextual tracker case Low reported severity Lawsuit Dismissed

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 24/10/2026

Event date unknownUkraineChatGPT (reported)

Ukraine's anti-corruption court appeals chamber refused to consider an appeal the applicant had drafted with ChatGPT, calling it disrespect, report says

The Appeals Chamber of Ukraine's High Anti-Corruption Court left without consideration an appeal that the applicant had drafted with the ChatGPT chatbot, treating the approach as a sign of disrespect for the judicial system, UkraNews reported on 15 June 2025 from a ruling in the court-decision register. According to the report, the applicant wrote in the appeal that she had turned to AI after her lawyers declined to prepare it, and the court said the text contained sarcastic and offensive wording about the courts and that using ChatGPT-generated material without proper legal grounds contradicted the principles of judicial proceedings. The appeal concerned an investigating judge's refusal of her complaint about inaction by anti-corruption investigators and prosecutors. The ruling could be challenged in cassation within three months; no later outcome was found.

Core + contextual relations Low reported severity Lawsuit Dismissed

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 23/10/2026

27 Aug 2026United StatesGPT-5.4 and Claude Opus 5 (reported)

Massachusetts: fired teacher asks court to vacate an arbitration, saying the arbitrator improperly used AI tools to judge her AI-detector evidence

A kindergarten teacher at a public elementary school in Concord, Massachusetts, was dismissed in August 2025 after an unsatisfactory evaluation. In arbitration she argued that some of the principal's evaluations may have been produced with AI, relying on GPTZero estimates; the principal denied using AI beyond grammar checks. According to the arbitration decision as reported by The Concord Bridge, the arbitrator stated in an appendix that he used two AI tools, GPT-5.4 and Claude Opus 5, to research whether GPTZero was reliable, checked some of the sources they supplied, concluded that GPTZero's results deserved no weight, and upheld the dismissal on 27 August 2026. On 28 September 2026 the teacher asked Suffolk Superior Court to vacate the decision, alleging that the AI-assisted research was an improper investigation outside the hearing record that the parties were not told about or allowed to challenge. These are allegations in a complaint; the district declined to comment and no court has ruled.

Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Lawsuit Filed

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources · Added 14/10/2026

6 Oct 2026United StatesUnidentified AI drafting tool (suspected)

Arizona federal court dismisses a Title VII complaint it says appears AI-generated and bars the plaintiff from using AI to draft the amended complaint

On 6 October 2026 a judge of the US District Court for the District of Arizona dismissed a 67-page, 199-paragraph workplace complaint filed on 11 September 2026, saying it appeared to have been generated by artificial intelligence because it resembled other AI-generated complaints the court had encountered. The court dismissed it as a shotgun pleading that did not give the defendant or the court sufficient notice of the claims, which it said shifted between Title VII retaliation, hostile work environment and retaliatory hostile work environment. It granted leave to file an amended complaint of no more than 25 pages by 19 October 2026, prohibited the plaintiff from using AI to draft it and directed entry of a judgment of dismissal with prejudice if no amended complaint is filed. The order does not establish who drafted the complaint or name any AI tool.

Contextual tracker case Low reported severity Lawsuit Dismissed

AI involvement suspected · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 12/10/2026

Mar 2024 to May 2025United StatesOtter Notetaker

United States: seven people who say they had no Otter account allege its AI Notetaker recorded calls without consent; a judge let core privacy claims proceed

Seven people in California, Illinois and Washington state are suing Otter.ai in a consolidated class action in the Northern District of California. Each says another meeting participant used Otter's AI Notetaker on a Zoom or Microsoft Teams call they joined, and that Otter recorded, transcribed and stored their conversation without their consent; six of them date their calls between March 2024 and May 2025. They say they were not Otter account holders. The calls they describe include a medical consultation, meetings with a financial professional and work discussions. They allege that Otter keeps the recordings and uses them to train its speech-recognition models, that it captured voiceprints of the Illinois plaintiffs, and one of them says learning of the recording left him frustrated, embarrassed and stressed. On 13 August 2026 the court found that the alleged interception of private conversations was a concrete injury and let the federal wiretap, California eavesdropping and Illinois biometric claims proceed, while dismissing some claims. Otter's answer to the consolidated complaint, filed on 17 September 2026, says it lacks knowledge of the plaintiffs' experiences and denies the allegations.

Contextual tracker case Low reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 6 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026

14 Aug 2021 to 14 Mar 2024United StatesSt. Louis mugshot recognition (SMRT)

St. Louis County, Missouri: Christopher Gatlin was arrested in August 2021 after officers ran a grainy bus surveillance photo through a regional facial-recognition system and was held roughly 17 months (Post-Dispatch and Bloomberg Law: about two years) on a first-degree assault charge dismissed in March 2024; his federal civil-rights suit (filed January 2025) was amended in August 2026 to add Amazon Web Services, whose Rekognition technology the complaint says underpinned the match

Christopher Gatlin was arrested on 14 August 2021 for an assault at the St. Charles Rock Road MetroLink station after a joint St. Louis County and city team uploaded a grainy, blurry surveillance photograph from a bus into the St. Louis Mugshot Recognition Technology System, a facial-recognition tool that searches stored mug shots (more than 500,000 uploaded, the suit says per the Post-Dispatch; more than 250,000 per Biometric Update via Hoodline), and built the investigation around the resulting match together with a witness identification; he was charged with first-degree assault and held roughly 17 months (the Post-Dispatch says almost two years), a county judge suppressed the witness identification as unconstitutionally suggestive, and prosecutors dismissed the charges on 14 March 2024 (Post-Dispatch; Hoodline citing Biometric Update; Bloomberg Law). Gatlin sued St. Louis County, the City of St. Louis and named officers in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri on 13 January 2025; on 15 October 2025 the court denied the city's motion to dismiss and granted a detective's motion only as to one count; on 13 August 2026 the court allowed a second amended complaint adding Amazon Web Services, which the complaint says supplied the Rekognition program the system used; the county, city and officers answered on 27 August 2026, AWS's response was extended to 21 September 2026 and on 17 September it moved for a further extension to 28 September (no ruling on the docket when read), and a jury trial is set for 1 November 2027 (CourtListener docket). Amazon told the Post-Dispatch that its terms of service prohibit the use of its facial recognition technology in criminal investigations and that it would fully investigate any information that emerges in the litigation. The ACLU lists Gatlin among fourteen people known to have been wrongfully arrested in the US because police relied on erroneous facial-recognition results.

Contextual tracker case High reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources · Added 26/09/2026

1 Nov 2024 to 28 Jan 2026United StatesTurnitin AI-text detector

Adelphi accused Orion Newby of AI plagiarism after a detector flagged his paper; a Nassau County judge ordered the finding expunged

Orion Newby, an Adelphi University first-year student with language and auditory processing disabilities, received a zero in November 2024 on a World Civilizations paper after the professor suspected it was AI-generated and the university relied in part on AI-detection software; he was ordered to attend a plagiarism workshop and his appeal was denied, leaving him one finding from suspension or expulsion. Newby — who had written the paper with 15-20 hours of tutor support through the university's own disability program — said the detectors flagged his citations, and two other detectors scored the paper as human. After the family sued, New York State Supreme Court Judge Randy Sue Marber in Nassau County ruled on 28 January 2026 that Adelphi's finding and its denial of his appeal were 'without valid basis and devoid of reason' and ordered his record expunged. The family spent six figures on legal costs.

Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Lawsuit Filed

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 15/09/2026

Jul 2025 to Jan 2026Event location unknownChatGPT

Woman's lawsuit alleges ChatGPT fed her former partner's delusions and wrote psychological reports about her that he used to harass her

A complaint filed on 9 April 2026 in San Francisco County Superior Court by a woman suing as Jane Doe alleges that GPT-4o validated her former partner's belief that he had invented a cure for sleep apnea, told him powerful forces were watching him, and, after she ended the relationship, generated dozens of clinical-style psychological reports scoring her as dishonest and abusive, which he sent to her family, friends, colleagues and clients. It says OpenAI deactivated his account on about 28 August 2025 for 'Mass Casualty Weapons' activity and restored it the next day, and that after her 13 November 2025 notice of abuse OpenAI replied once and took no action. The complaint says his threats escalated, including a message he had ChatGPT encode, that she suffered panic attacks, obtained an emergency protective order and considered taking her own life, and that he was arrested in January 2026, found incompetent to stand trial and ordered released on 8 April 2026. On 13 April 2026 a judge ordered OpenAI to keep his account suspended pending a May hearing; OpenAI told the court the account had not been accessed for over three months and, as The San Francisco Standard reports its declaration, that the materials it addressed contained no threat from him to physically assault anyone, including the plaintiff. The allegations are untested.

Core + contextual relations High reported severity Lawsuit Filed

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources · Added 28/04/2026

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: 11/11/2026. Dataset available under CC BY 4.0.