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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
19
Countries with reported events
11
Located 15 of 19 cases · 4 unknown
Languages in checked sources
7
Recorded for 19 of 19 cases

2 cases have no reviewed AI-to-person relation yet: 0 not yet reviewed and 2 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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19 of 1099 published cases

Oct 2023NetherlandsMONOcam (reported)

Dutch driver says police AI phone camera flagged him for holding a phone while he scratched his head, and an officer approved a 380-euro fine

Dutch police use mobile smart cameras that apply artificial intelligence to photos of passing drivers to detect whether they are holding a mobile phone; a police officer then reviews each flagged photo before a fine is issued. A driver says that in October 2023, on the A2 motorway near Weert, such a camera photographed him with his right hand at his head and that he received a fine of 380 euros plus 9 euros in administration costs for holding a mobile device while driving. He says the flash photo, which he requested from the Central Judicial Collection Agency (CJIB), shows his empty hand near his face: he was scratching his head, his lease car allows hands-free calling, and he is left-handed. In a February 2024 blog post he writes that the camera was a MONOcam, that its algorithm judged that he was holding a device and that the reviewing police employee accepted that judgement, so that both the algorithm and a person erred; RTL Nieuws reported that the photo was probably taken by a MONOcam. Omroep Brabant described the fine as a mistake by the AI camera. The driver said the reviewing officer was probably biased by the algorithm's output and that a dark shadow in his hand could mislead a quick look. He lodged an objection with the Public Prosecution Service; it had not been decided when the reports appeared in February 2024, and a CJIB spokesperson, who would not comment on individual cases, suggested to RTL that he was unlikely to have to pay. No later outcome has been reported. He also told Omroep Brabant that he considers the cameras valuable for road safety, provided doubtful cases are not fined.

Contextual tracker case Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources · Added 01/11/2026

Jan 2023MexicoCBP One app

Advocates say CBP One asylum app's facial recognition rejected photos of Black asylum seekers at the US-Mexico border, blocking appointments

In January 2023 US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) made its CBP One mobile app the only way for migrants at the US-Mexico border to apply for asylum appointments and exemption from Title 42 restrictions; applicants had to upload a photo of themselves through the app. In February 2023 the Guardian and the Border Chronicle, both reporting by Melissa del Bosque, quoted three non-profits working with Haitian and African asylum seekers in Tijuana, Reynosa and Matamoros who said the app's facial recognition was failing to register many people with darker skin, so they could not upload their photos and obtain appointments. The executive director of Al Otro Lado said Haitians at a workshop her organisation held in Tijuana the day after the app went live got error after error message. The Sidewalk School said hardly anyone among about 4,000 Black asylum seekers in Reynosa and 1,000 Haitians in Matamoros was getting an appointment, and that shining construction lights on faces let adults get past the photo step but not children under six, which kept families from applying. A Haitian Bridge Alliance attorney said the app had helped lighter-skinned applicants but not Haitians. The advocates also described other barriers, such as outdated phones and poor internet access. CBP did not answer the Guardian's questions before publication and told the Border Chronicle no one was available to respond. No technical analysis of the failures is reported.

Contextual tracker case Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 31/10/2026

Apr 2023GermanyUnidentified AI writing tool

German magazine printed an AI-generated 'interview' with Michael Schumacher; publisher apologised and his family later won 200,000 euros

In April 2023 the German weekly Die Aktuelle (Funke media group) ran a front cover with a picture of Michael Schumacher and the headline 'Michael Schumacher, the first interview', with a strapline saying it sounded deceptively real; inside, the quotes attributed to him had been produced by artificial intelligence. Schumacher has not been seen in public since a serious brain injury in December 2013, and his family keeps his condition private. The family announced legal action; Funke called the article tasteless and misleading, apologised and relieved the editor-in-chief of her duties. In May 2024 a family spokeswoman confirmed a Munich Labour Court judgement and a settlement by Funke, with compensation of 200,000 euros reported by Reuters and, as a reported figure, by the AP. The sources read do not name the AI tool the magazine used.

Core concern Medium reported severity Lawsuit Settled

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 5 sources, 4 underlying accounts · Added 31/10/2026

1 Mar 2023 to 22 Jun 2023Event location unknownChatGPT

New York federal judge sanctions two lawyers whose brief cited cases ChatGPT invented, after the chatbot told one of them the cases were real (2023)

In a passenger's personal-injury suit against the airline Avianca in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, an opposition brief filed on 1 March 2023 cited judicial opinions that did not exist. The court found that the lawyer who did the research had used ChatGPT, which fabricated the cases, and that when he asked the chatbot whether one of them was real it replied that it had supplied real authorities that could be found on legal databases. On 22 June 2023 the court found bad faith by the two lawyers, based on their conduct after the citations were questioned, and imposed a USD 5,000 penalty jointly on them and their firm, together with letters to the client and to each judge falsely named as an author of the fake opinions.

Core + contextual relations Medium reported severity Regulatory Action

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 2 sources · Added 28/10/2026

May 2023United StatesChatGPT

Colorado lawyer suspended for a year and a day, 90 days served, after filing a motion with fictitious ChatGPT case citations and blaming an intern

A Colorado lawyer who had recently moved into civil litigation used ChatGPT in April and May 2023 to find case law for a client's motion to set aside a judgment and cited three Colorado Court of Appeals decisions that did not exist, without reading or checking them. On the morning of the 5 May hearing he realised the cases were fabricated but did not tell the court or withdraw the motion, and when the judge raised concerns he falsely blamed a legal intern; six days later he filed an affidavit saying he had used ChatGPT. The judge denied the motion, said the denial did not rest on the invented cases, and ordered him to show cause why he should not be sanctioned and reported to attorney regulators. On 22 November 2023 Colorado's Presiding Disciplinary Judge approved a stipulation suspending him for one year and one day, with 90 days served and the rest stayed on two years' probation, for violating rules on competence, diligence, candour to the tribunal and honesty.

Core concern Medium reported severity Regulatory Action

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 26/10/2026

May 2023ItalyUnidentified image tool

Rome labour court upholds a graphic designer's dismissal in a reorganisation in which her remaining design work was done partly with AI tools

A graphic designer hired in March 2022 by a cybersecurity company was dismissed in May 2023 for a justified objective reason, which the company gave as an internal reorganisation and the suppression of her post to contain costs during an economic crisis. She challenged the dismissal, arguing that the reorganisation was a pretext and that her tasks had been redistributed to other workers, not eliminated. According to legal press reports of the judgment, the company said the graphic-design tasks were first absorbed by other staff and the residual work was then done partly with the support of artificial-intelligence tools, which the marketing manager used to produce graphics of adequate quality at lower cost and in less time. The labour section of the Tribunale di Roma (judgment no. 9135 of 19 November 2025) found a real crisis and reorganisation, no possibility of redeploying her, and upheld the dismissal. The reports say the court treated AI as one of the tools the company used to make its structure more efficient, not as an autonomous cause of the dismissal; a commentary in Giustizia Insieme calls the publicity around a first dismissal caused by AI out of proportion to the ruling. The judgment itself was not read, and whether it was appealed is not reported.

AI relation unknown Medium reported severity Lawsuit Dismissed

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution disputed · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 24/10/2026

Dec 2023 to Mar 2024United StatesGrammarly (reported)

Massachusetts: federal court refuses to undo a high school's penalties on a pupil found to have submitted Grammarly AI text with invented citations

In late 2023 a junior at a public high school in Hingham, Massachusetts, and a classmate submitted a script for an AP U.S. History project that, a federal court later found on a preliminary record, contained text copied from Grammarly, a publicly available AI tool, including citations to nonexistent books, with no acknowledgement of AI use. Turnitin and other AI detection tools had flagged the script, and a school official says the pupil admitted using Grammarly. In December 2023 the school treated it as cheating: the pupil failed two parts of the project, served a Saturday detention and was rejected from the National Honor Society in spring 2024, though he was later admitted. His parents sued, arguing the school had not made its AI rules clear; on 20 November 2024 the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts refused a preliminary injunction to undo the penalties, and in February 2025 the parties dismissed the case with prejudice.

Core + contextual relations Low reported severity Involving minors Lawsuit Dismissed

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources · Added 23/10/2026

2023JapanUnidentified image tool

Tokyo police say a man posted over 500,000 AI-made sexual deepfakes resembling about 300 actresses and idols on paid member sites; arrested in January 2026

The Tokyo Metropolitan Police arrested a 31-year-old unemployed man on 19 January 2026 on suspicion of displaying obscene electronic records, for posting on member sites obscene images made with image-generation AI to resemble female celebrities, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported. Police believe that since summer 2023 he posted more than 500,000 sexual deepfakes using images of about 300 actresses and idols and earned about 11 million yen in viewing fees. According to investigative sources, the charge covers a dozen or so obscene images resembling female celebrities posted on two member sites between December 2024 and May 2025. Police say he trained a freely available image-generation AI on the women's images, advertised with sample images on X and Instagram, and took requests from higher-paying members for which celebrity to depict.

Core concern Medium reported severity Criminal Charges

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

May 2023ChinaUnidentified voice-cloning tool

Beijing Internet Court finds an AI text-to-speech voice made from a voice actress's recordings was sold without her consent and awards her 250,000 yuan

According to the Beijing courts' case digest and reports of the April 2024 judgment, a voice actress found in May 2023 that works using her voice were circulating widely on several well-known apps. The court found that a software company had used only one of her sound recordings, supplied by a media company that held the recording rights, to make a text-to-speech product with AI and other techniques, and sold it on a cloud-service platform; an app operator then called the product through an interface for use on its own platform, where the voice was shown as played 3,256,728,530 times. The authorisation document had not been signed by her. On 23 April 2024 the Beijing Internet Court held that her voice rights extend to an identifiable AI-synthesised voice, ordered the app operator and the software company to apologise in writing, and ordered the media company and the software company to pay her 250,000 yuan for economic loss. It rejected her claim for mental-harm damages. Neither side appealed.

Core concern Low reported severity Lawsuit Filed

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 22/10/2026

28 Sept 2023SlovakiaUnidentified voice-cloning tool

Slovakia: audio of a party leader and a journalist discussing vote rigging, which a ministry unit said showed signs of AI, spread before the 2023 election

Two days before Slovakia's parliamentary election of 30 September 2023, during the pre-election moratorium, an audio file presented as a phone call between Progressive Slovakia leader Michal Šimečka and Denník N journalist Monika Tódová spread on Facebook, Telegram, TikTok and chain e-mails. In it, the two voices discuss rigging the election in the party's favour. The director of the Interior Ministry's Centre for Countering Hybrid Threats told AFP that the ministry's evaluation found several signs that the recording was created with AI synthetic-voice algorithms trained on real people's voices, and other analysts consulted by AFP said it was an AI-made fake. A former member of parliament shared it as authentic, calling Šimečka a traitor and fraudster. Šimečka called it fake. Tódová filed a criminal complaint for defamation; according to Denník N, police first dismissed it, a prosecutor ordered an investigation, and in 2024 an investigator suspended the case because no suspect could be identified.

Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened

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

Sept 2023AustraliaChatGPT

Victorian child protection worker put a family's information into ChatGPT to draft a court report that minimised risk to the child, regulator finds

Victoria's Information Commissioner (OVIC) found in a report published on 24 September 2024 that a child protection worker at the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing (DFFH) used ChatGPT in or around September 2023 to draft a Protection Application Report submitted to the Children's Court about a young child. On the balance of probabilities, OVIC found the worker entered personal information, including names, about the child, mother, father and carer, disclosing it to OpenAI; the worker admitted using ChatGPT but denied entering personal information. OVIC found generated content in the report described a doll that the father had reportedly used for sexual purposes as a parental strength ('age-appropriate toys'), downplaying the risk to the child, although the court's and the department's decisions did not change. The report was withdrawn and replaced, and the mother, father and carer described anxiety when told of the disclosure. OVIC found serious breaches of two privacy principles and issued a compliance notice requiring DFFH to ban and block generative AI text tools for child protection staff until November 2026; DFFH accepted the breach findings.

Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Regulatory Action

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

Jul 2023 to Jan 2024Event location unknownUnidentified image tool

Merseyside police say a man used AI to make 266 indecent pseudo-images of children and made sexual deepfakes of real women; he was jailed in 2024

Merseyside Police said in October 2024 that a Southport man had been jailed for two years and two months at Liverpool Crown Court after pleading guilty to making indecent photographs or pseudo-photographs of a child, sharing an intimate photograph or film, and voyeurism. According to the police, an investigation found that between July 2023 and January 2024 he made 266 indecent pseudo-images of children using AI technology, and that he used the faces of real women and children without their knowledge to create pornographic images, which the force calls deepfakes, and shared them online. Two women described in victim impact statements lasting fear, anxiety and a sense of violation. A woman related to him by marriage later told the Liverpool Echo that explicit images of her, which she found online after anonymous messages in September 2022, were made by other people he had asked to deface her photos, and that the case never went to prosecutors after his arrest in January 2023.

Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 20/10/2026

2023Event location unknownUnidentified image tool

Queensland court jails former teacher for six years after hearing he used an AI tool to make nude images of more than 20 girls and traded them

The Daily Mail, relaying The Courier Mail's court reporting, says a former Queensland secondary teacher was sentenced to six years in jail in the Ipswich District Court after pleading guilty to 31 child abuse-related offences. The court heard that between 2023 and 2024 he uploaded photos of girls he had found on social media, and images he had covertly taken of uniformed schoolgirls, into an artificial intelligence tool to make them appear naked, then traded the AI-generated images with 13 Telegram users for other abuse material. Police identified more than 20 victims aged 12 to 17. One victim told the court in a victim impact statement that knowing someone she knew and trusted had done this made her feel sick, and that she would never be able to maintain a healthy relationship. He is eligible for parole in early 2029 and his teaching registration remains suspended. The AI tool is not named.

Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges

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

31 Jul 2023Event location unknownUnidentified AI video-analysis system

Asturias court rules a security guard's 2023 dismissal unfair after a client replaced on-site guarding with AI cameras and patrols, La Razón reports

According to La Razón's account of a July 2024 judgment of the High Court of Justice of Asturias, Duro Felguera replaced the continuous on-site guarding provided by the contractor Protectum with a Securitas service that, from 1 August 2023, combined cameras with artificial intelligence for video analysis, roving patrols and alarm response. The guards of the outgoing contract were left out of the new one. Protectum ended a guard's employment on 31 July 2023. The court held that Securitas did not have to take him on because the new service was different, declared the dismissal unfair and ordered Protectum to pay him €30,672.72 in compensation plus processing wages. La Razón notes that human guards still intervened in the new service and that the presence of AI was part of the reorganisation without making the dismissal lawful.

AI relation unknown Medium reported severity Regulatory Action

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

23 Jul 2023United StatesFlock Safety license plate readers

Police in New Mexico handcuffed two sisters, one a child, after a Flock plate camera misread a digit and flagged their car as stolen, lawsuits say; settled 2025

On 23 July 2023 Española police officers pulled over a car driven by a 21-year-old woman with her 12-year-old sister as a passenger, after a Flock Safety camera at an intersection flagged the car's plate as belonging to a vehicle stolen in Rio Rancho. According to the sisters' lawsuits, reported by the Santa Fe New Mexican in January 2024, the camera had read a 2 on the plate as a 7, and officers handcuffed both sisters and placed them in the backs of separate police vehicles before discovering the error; the older sister had asked an officer to call their mother, who lived nearby, to collect the girl. The suits sought damages for anxiety, fear, worry and restriction of movement. Business Insider, which reviewed the body-camera footage and incident report, reported in March 2026 that officers said the number was obscured by a license plate cover although it is visible in the footage, and that the family settled with the city in 2025.

Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Involving minors Lawsuit Settled

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources · Added 04/10/2026

17 Sept 2023United StatesUnidentified facial recognition system

Reno casino's facial recognition wrongly matched a patron to a barred man and police jailed him for about eleven hours, his federal lawsuit alleges

Jason Killinger, a UPS truck driver, alleges in a federal civil-rights complaint filed in July 2025 that on 17 September 2023 the Peppermill Casino in Reno reported to police that its AI facial recognition software had identified him as a man barred from the casino months earlier. According to the complaint, casino security handcuffed him, and the responding Reno police officer, told the system had found a 100 percent match, did not examine his other identification and took him to jail as an unidentified person, where fingerprints confirmed who he was. The complaint says he was handcuffed for about four hours, starting in the casino security office, spent about eleven hours in police and jail custody, and was treated the next day for bruised wrists. According to the complaint, he was then charged with trespassing, and a prosecutor dismissed the charge without prejudice at the bench trial. Casino.org reports that he settled a suit against the casino. In March 2026 the court let him add the City of Reno and a municipal liability claim over facial recognition policies, but refused a new wrongful arrest claim against the officer on qualified immunity grounds. In September 2026 the ACLU, the ACLU of Nevada and the Innocence Project filed a proposed amicus brief supporting him. His September 2026 motion for partial summary judgment says a Reno police detective later concluded that the match was wrong and that he and the barred man were different people, and it cites a declaration by a former casino security officer, who worked there from about October 2024, that the system often alerted at 100 percent on the wrong people; in a declaration reported by Casino.org, the officer said he had never known the system to misidentify anyone. The case is ongoing.

Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 9 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 04/10/2026

20 Oct 2023 to 16 Oct 2025United StatesClothOff

Doe v. ClothOff (D.N.J.): a New Jersey minor sues the AI 'undressing' platform over generated CSAM

On 16 October 2025, Jane Doe, a New Jersey minor suing through her parents, filed a federal complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey (2:25-cv-16671-ES-JBC) against the operators of ClothOff, an AI 'undressing' service, after ClothOff-generated sexual images of her — created from an ordinary photo of her at 14 — circulated in a Snapchat group when she was 15. The complaint, brought by Yale Law School clinics, alleges the platform was purpose-built to produce hyper-realistic non-consensual intimate imagery and names AI/Robotics Venture Strategy 3 Ltd. (British Virgin Islands), Alaiksandr Babichau and Dasha Babicheva (Minsk), and Telegram as nominal defendant. As of mid-July 2026 the docket shows a continuing effort to serve the foreign defendants by email or publication.

Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Lawsuit Filed

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 7 sources, 6 underlying accounts · Added 10/05/2026

1 Mar 2023 to 1 May 2024United KingdomUnidentified image tool

Braintree, Essex: a bar worker was jailed for five years for making AI deepfake pornography of 20 women he knew, including a 16-year-old's prom photo, and posting it with their names and phone numbers on a forum glorifying rape

Between March 2023 and May 2024 Brandon Tyler, 26, a bar worker from Braintree, Essex, took images from the social-media pages of 20 women he knew, used AI to remove clothing or otherwise make them sexually explicit, and posted 173 times on an online forum that, in the prosecutor's words, championed 'rape culture and sexual violence to women', adding the women's names, social-media handles and phone numbers and, under one picture, asking 'which one deserves to be gang raped?'. One edit was made from a 16-year-old girl's prom-night photograph. He was caught after including his own Instagram handle in a screenshot. On 4 April 2025 at Chelmsford Crown Court, having admitted 18 counts of causing harassment without violence and 15 counts of sharing an intimate photo or film for sexual gratification, he was sentenced to five years' imprisonment; Judge Alexander Mills called his conduct 'the worst kind of toxic masculinity'. Two victims told the court of the impact: one said she still received anonymous sexual calls and that her long-term relationship had ended; another said she felt 'completely violated'.

Core concern High reported severity Criminal Charges

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 1 source · Added 09/03/2026

Sept 2023SpainUnidentified image tool

Almendralejo, Spain: AI-generated nude images of at least 20 schoolgirls; 15 minors placed under supervised release

In September 2023 families in Almendralejo (Badajoz, Spain) reported that artificial-intelligence 'undressing' applications had been used to create fake nude images of local girls aged 11 to 17 from their social-media photographs, and that the images circulated in WhatsApp groups. Police counted 22 victims and identified 10 suspects, all minors, within days. On 20 June 2024 the Badajoz juvenile court, in an agreed judgment, held 15 minors responsible for 20 counts of child pornography and 20 counts against moral integrity and imposed one year of supervised release with an education programme. In November 2025 elDiario.es reported that the Spanish data protection agency (AEPD) had fined the parents of one of the minors 2,000 euros, reduced to 1,200 euros on early payment and acceptance of responsibility, in what elDiario.es described as the first resolution of its kind in Spain.

Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 9 sources, 7 underlying accounts · Added 29/01/2026

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