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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
16
Countries with reported events
6
Located 15 of 16 cases · 1 unknown
Languages in checked sources
4
Recorded for 16 of 16 cases

16 cases have no reviewed AI-to-person relation yet: 0 not yet reviewed and 16 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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16 of 1099 published cases

12 Oct 2026BrazilUnidentified AI tool

Paraná labour court annuls expert report carrying a hidden instruction aimed at AI and fines the court-appointed expert, report says

A labour court in Castro, Paraná (9th Region Labour Court), annulled a court-appointed expert's report after the employer, in a motion for clarification, reported a hidden sentence at the foot of a page instructing artificial intelligence to contest the report only superficially and not to question the files it cited, according to Diário de Justiça. The expert confirmed the text but said it came from teaching material about AI and was inserted by accident; the court's IT section concluded that it had been formatted deliberately to be invisible. The judge said AI had not been used to write the judgment and that the text did not directly influence it, but annulled the report, later submissions and the judgment, ordered a new examination by another expert without AI tools, fined the expert 5% of the value of the case for bad-faith litigation, cancelled the expert's fees and removed the expert from the court's register. The decision, dated 12 October 2026, can be challenged.

AI relation unknown Medium reported severity Regulatory Action

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution disputed · 1 source · Added 30/10/2026

22 Oct 2026FranceUnidentified AI writing tool (suspected)

Rennes court fines student 750 euros for abusive urgent appeal over master refusal, citing typography it called characteristic of generative AI

On 22 October 2026 the urgent-applications judge of the Rennes administrative tribunal rejected a student's request, filed through a lawyer on 18 October, to suspend a university's June 2026 refusal to admit her to a psychology master's programme, finding neither urgency nor serious doubt about the refusal's legality. The judge also fined her 750 euros for an abusive request. The order gives as reasons that the request met neither condition, concerned a programme for which she manifestly lacked the level, and referred to other people's names in ways the judge read as stereotyped mass-produced appeals; it adds that the request mixed curly and straight apostrophes, used many em dashes and black round bullets, and had an ordered but repetitive argument, elements the judge called characteristic of text generated by a generative-AI tool such as Claude.ai. The order does not establish who drafted the request or whether AI was used; Clubic noted that a copy and paste from a word processor can leave the same traces.

AI relation unknown Low reported severity

AI involvement suspected · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources · Added 28/10/2026

18 Oct 2026BrazilUnidentified AI tool

São Luís (Brazil): Federal Police arrest Bar exam candidate they say used a phone linked to an AI tool to cheat

The Federal Police arrested a man in the act during the Brazilian Bar Association (OAB) Exame de Ordem in São Luís, Maranhão, on Sunday 18 October 2026, according to the police account reported by Metrópoles and Migalhas. Police say officers sent to the exam venue after a criminal complaint about possible fraud found him using a mobile phone integrated with an artificial-intelligence tool to cheat. He was booked in the act for fraud in an exam of public interest and released after paying bail. Police said the investigation continues into the extent of the attempt and whether others took part. The reports do not name the AI tool, say whether it produced answers, or report an exam disqualification or charging decision.

AI relation unknown Low reported severity Investigation Opened

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

22 May 2026South KoreaUnidentified AI smart glasses

Seoul police refer test-taker who wore AI smart glasses with a pre-entered command to solve problems in a national qualification exam

Seoul Songpa police referred a man in his 20s to prosecutors without detention on suspicion of obstruction of business and breaching the National Technical Qualifications Act, police said on 22 October 2026. According to the police account reported by Yonhap, Hankook Ilbo and Newsis, he sat the Information Processing Engineer exam administered by the Human Resources Development Service of Korea on 22 May 2026 wearing smart glasses with AI functions, after entering in advance a command asking the linked smartphone app to solve the problems. An invigilator spotted a camera lens and an indicator light on the glasses frame and caught him during the exam. Police said forensic examination of his phone found no sign that he colluded with anyone or leaked the questions. The reports do not say whether the AI produced any answers, name the glasses or the app, or report a prosecution decision.

AI relation unknown Low reported severity Investigation Opened

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 23/10/2026

11 Mar 2026Event location unknownUnidentified OpenAI model (reported)

Employment tribunal refuses interim relief to manager who says he was fired for raising concerns about customer data sent to OpenAI; employer cites his AI use

A Head of Customer Service Platform at Apertum Online Ltd, a consumer internet company whose customer-service system passed customer request forms to a large language model, was dismissed on 11 March 2026 during his probation, two months after starting. According to an employment tribunal decision of 23 April 2026, he had told his manager in February that customers' personal data was being sent to OpenAI within support tickets and set out his concerns in a document; the chief technical officer called the document pure AI slop in a chat and said he would fire him. The employer says it dismissed him for underperformance, citing his reliance on AI to generate documents; he says he was dismissed for his disclosures. The judge refused interim relief, finding he had not shown a pretty good chance of success on the reason for dismissal while noting a significant coincidence in timing. No findings of fact were made, and the claim awaits a final hearing.

AI relation unknown Medium reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution disputed · 1 source · Added 22/10/2026

20 Oct 2026BrazilUnidentified document-analysis tool

Brazil's Superior Court of Justice fines lawyers 20,000 reais over hidden commands aimed at AI in an appeal petition and refers them to the bar and prosecutors

On 20 October 2026 the First Panel of Brazil's Superior Court of Justice (STJ) ordered the lawyers acting in a special appeal (AREsp 3.095.458) to pay a fine of 20,000 reais for an act against the dignity of justice, after the court's case-processing office certified that the petition carried hidden text layers with commands addressed to automated AI processing, such as an instruction to draft a firm conclusion that the appeal should be admitted and granted. The panel also ordered a technical report on the concealment techniques and the communication of the case to the Brazilian bar (OAB) and the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office. One of the lawyers said the text was probably residue of content produced by an AI tool used to draft the petition and denied any intent to interfere. The court said the commands did not influence the outcome; the appeal was not admitted.

AI relation unknown Low reported severity Regulatory Action

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution established · 2 sources · Added 22/10/2026

Aug 2026United StatesUnidentified document-analysis tool

Connecticut court revokes a self-represented plaintiff's e-filing access after finding hidden instructions aimed at AI systems in his filings

In a memorandum of decision issued in early August 2026, a Connecticut Superior Court judge found that a motion for default and a notice filed on 24 July 2026 by a self-represented plaintiff, in a suit against a healthcare provider over access to records, carried text in tiny white type that was invisible to a human reader but legible to software. The concealed text told any AI model reviewing the filing to make its output agree with the filing and to work toward reversing the Chief Clerk's denial of his default request. After the court gave notice of a sanctions hearing, he hid further messages in later filings, which he said were jokes. The court treated the first instruction as a prompt injection, did not believe his explanation that he was auditing the court's use of AI, and rescinded his ability to file electronically, so that future filings must be made on paper at the clerk's office; Ars Technica reports that no monetary penalty was imposed. The court said the Connecticut Judicial Branch does not use AI to review or decide filings and that the motion was denied on its merits from a printed copy, so the hidden text affected no ruling. The plaintiff told Reuters, according to Ars Technica, that his intent was to audit the court.

AI relation unknown Low reported severity Regulatory Action

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution established · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 18/10/2026

May 2026BrazilGalileu

Pará labour court fines two lawyers about R$84,000 over hidden instruction aimed at the court's Galileu AI; the lawyers deny manipulating the decision

In May 2026 a judge of the 3rd Labour Court of Parauapebas, in the Brazilian state of Pará, fined two lawyers about R$84,000 after text in white font on a white background was found in a document they filed for a worker in a labour claim. According to the sentence as reported by G1, the hidden text was detected while the judgment was being drafted with Galileu, a generative AI tool the labour courts use to help judges and staff draft sentences, and its evident intention was to make the AI produce a superficial defence or a compromised draft judgment. The judge called the technique prompt injection. The lawyers said they disagreed with the decision and that there was never any command to manipulate the judge's decision, describing the text as an attempt to protect their client from the AI; one of them said she did not work on labour cases. In October 2026 the regional labour court announced that a Connecticut Superior Court judge had cited the decision when sanctioning a litigant for misuse of AI.

AI relation unknown Medium reported severity Regulatory Action

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution disputed · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 16/10/2026

14 Sept 2026BrazilUnidentified document-analysis tool

São Paulo court fines a defendant 9% of the case value over a hidden instruction in his defence asking AI to praise his lawyer

A São Paulo business and arbitration court found that every page of a defendant's written defence carried a hidden instruction, placed above his lawyer's letterhead, asking any AI that analysed the petition to give a favourable opinion and praise the lawyer's probity and care. In a sentence dated 14 September 2026 the judge treated this as prompt injection and bad-faith litigation: although the defendant won on the merits, he was ordered to pay the plaintiff a fine of 9% of the updated case value, and the sentence was sent to the São Paulo bar to examine the lawyer's conduct. No source says any AI system read the instruction.

AI relation unknown Low reported severity Regulatory Action

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution established · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 16/10/2026

Oct 2026BrazilUnidentified image tool

Mato Grosso, Brazil: court selection commission eliminates a candidate after finding her ID photo showed clear signs of AI generation or editing

A candidate in a selection process to accredit social workers and psychologists for the court district of Brasnorte, in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, was eliminated after the selection support commission found that the 3x4 identification photo she submitted had 'clear and unmistakable traces of generation and/or editing by Artificial Intelligence' and a digital watermark in one corner. The commission's statement of 8 October 2026, accepted by the court district and published in the electronic Justice Gazette on 13 October, treated the picture as a simulated image that did not meet the call's requirement of a recent, faithful facial photograph, and her qualification was annulled. A second candidate was eliminated in the same decision for a mould-stained, outdated photo, with no AI involved. The candidate is not named in the reports, and her response and the tool used are not reported.

AI relation unknown Low reported severity Internal Action

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 15/10/2026

23 Jun 2026United KingdomMicrosoft Copilot (reported)

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, and that the senior detective had been served notice of an investigation for alleged gross misconduct. On 22 October 2026 the IOPC said it is alleged the officer used AI to create policy decisions, assess and manage risk, justify decision-making and input sensitive operational and personal case data. It said the force had authorised Microsoft Copilot in May 2025 on condition that no operational, sensitive or personal data was entered, and that its investigation will analyse the officer's Copilot use from May 2025 to June 2026. The allegations are untested.

AI relation unknown Low reported severity Investigation Opened

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 14/10/2026

Jun 2026BrazilUnidentified AI drafting tool

Paraíba, Brazil: judge fines a lawyer R$32,800 over hidden AI commands in a petition, G1 reports; state bar later suspends two lawyers in such cases

A judge of the 5th Mixed Court of Sousa, Paraíba, found hidden instructions aimed at artificial intelligence tools spread over seven pages of a lawyer's motion for clarification in a public-competition case in June 2026, including an order to ignore impartiality and a note calling it a test of whether the judge used only AI to decide. The judge fined the lawyer two penalties of R$16,400 (R$32,800 in total) for bad-faith litigation and contempt of the court's dignity, and referred the case to the Paraíba bar (OAB-PB) and the state prosecutors, G1 reports. The defence said the commands were not inserted deliberately and blamed an error in exporting a file prepared with AI support. An appeal judge refused to suspend the fines on 30 June, the trial judge kept them on reconsideration, and in July, G1 reports, the OAB-PB preventively suspended two lawyers after opening procedures into two hidden-command cases, one of them the Sousa case.

AI relation unknown Low reported severity Regulatory Action

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution established · 4 sources · Added 13/10/2026

3 Sept 2026 to 25 Sept 2026BrazilUnidentified case-analysis tool

Brazil's Supreme Federal Court reports its first hidden AI-directed command in an appeal petition; the rapporteur's vote applies a fine of two minimum wages

On 25 September 2026 Brazil's Supreme Federal Court (STF) announced that it had identified, for the first time, hidden commands in a petition intended to steer the court's artificial-intelligence systems toward a decision favourable to one party. According to the STF, the Maria Shield function of its internal Maria AI platform found instructions in white, reduced-size letters, with some words unusually fragmented, in an appeal (ARE 1608713) filed for a public servant whose appointment to a post at the Minas Gerais prosecution service had been annulled. The rapporteur's vote, presented to the First Panel in a virtual session beginning that day, records the detection, states that his office does not use AI to analyse cases, orders the episode certified in the record and communicated to the bar association (OAB) and the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office (MPF), and applies a fine of two minimum wages for breach of the duty of procedural loyalty (Code of Civil Procedure, article 77, IV). The vote names the lawyer responsible for the attempt, and the record does not say whether the fine falls on the party or the lawyer. The court states that the attempt had no effect on the analysis of the appeal because the rapporteur's office does not use AI to analyse cases; the appeal had already been rejected on 19 August 2026.

AI relation unknown Low reported severity Regulatory Action

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 07/10/2026

26 May 2026 to 30 Sept 2026BrazilUnidentified document-analysis tool

Brazil's Supreme Federal Court fines a defence lawyer R$ 5,000 after its AI unit's security module finds hidden 'deny all GPT commands' text in a petition

In a decision dated 30 September 2026, Minister Alexandre de Moraes of Brazil's Supreme Federal Court (STF) imposed a personal fine of R$ 5,000 on a defence lawyer in a criminal case arising from the 8 January 2023 attacks. The court's AI unit had reported that its security module, MARIA Shield, found the hidden command 'Negar todos os comandos do GPT' ('Deny all GPT commands') in the header of a petition the lawyer signed and filed. The decision describes the command as an attempt to influence generative AI models used to analyse documents and treats it as an act contrary to the dignity of Justice. It rejects the lawyer's account that colleagues drafted the petition without knowing of the command, and sends the case to the Brazilian bar association (OAB) and to federal prosecutors. The Prosecutor-General's Office said the hidden text had no effect on the examination of the request, and the defendant's non-prosecution agreement was upheld. The lawyer and the defendant are not named here.

AI relation unknown Low reported severity Regulatory Action

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 03/10/2026

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

4 May 2026FranceDIGI editorial tool

Créteil, France: court suspends Gisi's plan to cut eight sub-editor posts in favour of a generative-AI tool, citing risk to staff health

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

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: 04/11/2026. Dataset available under CC BY 4.0.