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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
95
Countries with reported events
24
Located 86 of 95 cases · 9 unknown
Languages in checked sources
23
Recorded for 95 of 95 cases

16 cases have no reviewed AI-to-person relation yet: 0 not yet reviewed and 16 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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95 of 1099 published cases · page 1 of 5

7 Jun 2026AlgeriaChatGPT

Algiers court jails a baccalaureate candidate and his sister for four years; prosecutor says she answered his exam questions with ChatGPT

The prosecutor at the Cheraga court in Algiers said that on 7 June 2026 an exam supervisor caught a free baccalaureate candidate photographing the exam questions and sending them by WhatsApp to his sister, who obtained answers from ChatGPT and sent them back for him to use. The court convicted both of leaking exam questions and answers by remote communication, sentenced each to four years' imprisonment and a 200,000-dinar fine, and had them detained at the hearing. Both appealed, and at the Algiers appeal hearing, which Ennahar said was scheduled for 21 July 2026, the prosecutor-general asked for heavier sentences (Ennahar, 22 July); no appeal ruling was found by 1 November 2026.

Core concern Medium reported severity Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 01/11/2026

12 May 2026 to 28 Aug 2026RomaniaUnidentified document-generation tool

Romanian prosecutors say a man posing as a lawyer used AI apps to make documents purporting to come from courts and took about 48,000 lei from a client

The prosecutors' office attached to the Giurgiu district court in Romania said on 30 October 2026 that it had begun criminal proceedings for continued fraud against a detained man who, according to the evidence gathered, falsely presented himself as a lawyer between 12 May and 28 August 2026 and, using applications that use artificial intelligence, drew up documents purportedly issued by courts, including the Bucharest Court of Appeal and the Giurgiu district court. According to the prosecutors, the injured person handed over a total of 47,896 lei, and also a pig, as payment for the supposed legal services. The prosecutors asked the court to remand him in custody for 30 days. He is presumed innocent.

Core concern Medium reported severity Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 01/11/2026

29 Oct 2026TaiwanUnidentified voice-cloning tool

Taiwan prosecutors arrest man over deepfake audio imitating Taipei mayoral candidate Puma Shen admitting kickbacks; investigators confirmed it was a deepfake

A recording that imitated the voice of Puma Shen (Shen Po-yang), the Democratic Progressive Party's candidate for mayor of Taipei, appeared on Threads late on 29 October 2026 under a caption calling it a suspected private recording; in it the voice admitted taking kickbacks from US arms purchases. Taiwan's Investigation Bureau said its forensic check confirmed the audio as deepfake content, and Taoyuan prosecutors said a man had made the clip with a highly realistic imitation of Shen's voice and spread it on social media. Prosecutors arrested him on 30 October, seized his phone and sought his detention for spreading falsehoods by a deepfake-voice method to make a candidate lose, an offence under the election law that carries up to seven years in prison. The Taoyuan District Court released him on NT$100,000 bail with an eight-month travel ban, CNA reports. At the hearing he admitted spreading the clip but said he had downloaded it from Facebook, and the court found the file did not yet show a link to whoever originally made it, TVBS reports. Shen said his team had taken legal action against those who made and shared the clip. The man is not named here.

Core concern Medium reported severity Criminal Charges

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 5 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 31/10/2026

16 Sept 2026UkraineUnidentified image tool

Ukrainian court fines mother after her son used AI to generate a fake nude photo of his teacher and sent it to a classmate

A district court in Ukraine's Poltava region fined the mother of a school pupil on 22 October 2026 after finding she had failed in her duty to bring up her son, who, according to the case materials as reported, used a neural network on 16 September 2026 to generate fake nude photos of his teacher from her image without her consent and sent one to a classmate. The mother admitted the offence and confirmed her son had made such images, saying he sent only one to a classmate and that she did not know how the photos spread further. The court imposed an administrative fine of 850 hryvnias plus court fees. The report does not name the AI tool, and no statement from the teacher is reported.

Core concern Medium reported severity Regulatory Action

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

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

5 Jun 2026 to 30 Sept 2026United KingdomMicrosoft Copilot

English family court gives no significant weight to a social worker's assessments after finding they were generated with Microsoft Copilot

In a care-proceedings judgment dated 30 September 2026 ([2026] EWFC 306, Family Court sitting at Truro), the judge examined how an expert instructed in the case, whom the judgment calls an ISW (an independent social worker), had prepared a parenting assessment of the father, two addenda and two kinship assessments of maternal relatives between June and September 2026. The judgment records that she disclosed no AI use in her first report and, when asked, wrote that Microsoft Copilot had been used to organise information and assist in drafting. Text that the judge identified as Copilot's own summary appeared in both kinship assessments, and in oral evidence she said Copilot summarises her transcribed notes and generates her report, confirming that one kinship assessment was entirely AI-generated from her notes. The judge found that the analysis of the evidence, headings, layout and construction of the reports were AI-generated, that this was a higher-risk use which affected the weight of the reports, and that the leftover Copilot text showed inadequate human oversight. The parenting assessment also contained factual errors (it said the father accepted the court's findings, and called a child autistic without a diagnosis); the judge said it was not clear whether these came from the AI or the original notes. Citing both the AI use and a lack of rigour, the judge found that no significant weight could be placed on the ISW's evidence, and made final care orders for the three children. The judge saw no significant issue in the use of Copilot for transcription and grammar and noted it is a closed, secure tool.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 29/10/2026

7 Oct 2026PolandUnidentified chatbot

Warsaw police say a French alert about a man's AI chat conversations sent officers to his flat at night; a doctor admitted him to hospital for observation

According to a release published on 8 October 2026 by a Warsaw district police headquarters, officers at a local station received information from French services, which had notified the Polish side of content indicating a possible threat to the life and health of several people and of its author. The police say the information showed that the content of the man's conversations had been treated by "the system" as possible real intentions and then reported; in the conversations he described ways of injuring and killing people. Shortly after 3 a.m. on a Wednesday, which Onet reports as 7 October, officers went to the address and found the man and a sleeping child. By the police account, he confirmed that he had held conversations using artificial intelligence, said he had discussed various topics and built theories, and said he did not intend to carry out the plans and considered them unrealistic. An ambulance team was called; after an initial conversation and examination he was taken to hospital for a consultation, and a doctor decided to admit him to a ward for observation. The child stayed in the care of a close person. The police do not name the chatbot, do not say what "the system" that reported the conversations was, and do not say how the content reached the French services. No charge is reported.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/10/2026

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

10 Jun 2026United StatesGrok (reported)

Pennsylvania police say a mall worker used Grok to turn a photo he took of a teen girl in a park into child sexual abuse material; charged

Township police in Pennsylvania say a man who worked at a shopping mall photographed a teenage girl in a public park and used the AI app Grok to create child sexual abuse material from the photo, NBC10 Philadelphia reported on 23 October 2026. Officials cited by NBC10 say his devices held hundreds of AI-generated child sexual abuse videos and photos, other child sexual abuse material and more than 150 covert upskirt videos of women and teenage girls. The criminal complaint, as reported by the Delaware County Daily Times on 27 October, says the park photos were taken on 8 June 2026, that a matching AI video was created on 10 June, that records police obtained from Grok by warrant held the account's text prompts, and that investigators found 76 AI-generated videos and 53 AI images, fewer than the hundreds of files NBC10 relayed. The investigation began in June 2026 after a woman reported seeing such material on his phone; he was arrested on 21 October, posted bail and faces a preliminary hearing on 30 October. The charges are unproven.

Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges

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

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

19 Mar 2026Event location unknownChatGPT

Brasília labour court upholds the for-cause dismissal of a manager it found used ChatGPT to alter a delivery photo to contest an iFood customer's complaint

In a judgment of 30 July 2026, the 2nd Labour Court of Brasília (Regional Labour Court of the 10th Region) upheld the dismissal for cause, on 19 March 2026, of a manager hired in June 2024. The employer said he had used artificial intelligence to falsify photos of orders on the iFood delivery app. A witness told the court she saw him use ChatGPT to alter a photo of an incomplete order, in which two of four soft drinks had been sent, so that it appeared complete, and use it to contest the customer's complaint to iFood support. The judge found this an act of dishonesty and misconduct that broke the trust required of a manager, rejected his claim that the dismissal was fabricated in retaliation for a claim he had filed the day before, dismissed all his claims, denied severance items and ordered him to pay 10% counsel fees, suspended because he was granted free legal aid. The legal news site Migalhas reported the judgment on 3 August 2026. No appeal is reported.

Core concern Medium reported severity Lawsuit Dismissed

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 23/10/2026

28 Sept 2026Event location unknownChatGPT (reported)

Switzerland: Federal Supreme Court refuses to hear a 243-page appeal that the appellant said was drafted with intensive ChatGPT Plus support

A father in a dispute with the canton of Basel-Stadt over an electricity-price bonus for his newborn daughter filed a 243-page appeal with 17 requests to Switzerland's Federal Supreme Court, about 28 times the length of the cantonal judgment he challenged, which ran to just under eight and a half pages. He told the court that drafting it had been possible only through his "above-average intelligence", his analytical skills and the intensive support of ChatGPT Plus. In judgment 2C_549/2026 of 28 September 2026 the presiding judge, sitting alone, found the brief excessively prolix, held that using artificial intelligence did not release him from the pleading requirements and was no free pass for sprawling briefs, refused him a period to shorten it and declined to hear the appeal. No court costs were imposed. blue News reported the judgment on 20 October 2026.

Core concern Low reported severity Lawsuit Dismissed

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

Aug 2026 to Sept 2026TaiwanMicrosoft Copilot (reported)

Taipei District Court fines a litigant NT$30,000 for abusive retrial petitions that pasted in Copilot conversations, CTWANT reports

CTWANT reported on 22 October 2026 two rulings of the Taipei District Court in Taiwan. In August 2026 a civil division dismissed a retrial petition into which, it said, the petitioner had only pasted his conversations with Microsoft Copilot's generative AI; it said this was not in itself impermissible but that retrial grounds had not been lawfully stated, and that his copying of online news articles into Copilot and then of the whole exchange into his filing was a statement of his opinion and not objective evidence. He petitioned again and, in September 2026, a three-judge panel of another civil division said the new petition appeared to be generative AI conversation content placed in the filing, found that he had repeatedly petitioned on the same or similar grounds with a malicious purpose of wasting judicial resources, and fined him NT$30,000 under Article 249-1 of the Code of Civil Procedure, warning that further abusive filings could bring a heavier fine. CTWANT describes it as the first court fine in Taiwan for abusive litigation with AI. The underlying claim, about fraudsters' misuse of his mobile number, had already been finally rejected. The rulings themselves were not inspected.

Core concern Low reported severity Regulatory Action

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

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

Feb 2026Event location unknownUnidentified image tool

Brasília appeals court upholds 20,000-reais damages against a federal deputy for an AI-made image placing Bolsonaro in a nonexistent scene

In February 2026 federal deputy Rogério Correia posted on X a realistic image produced with artificial intelligence that, according to the Federal District court, inserted former president Jair Bolsonaro into a nonexistent scene and linked him to the banker Daniel Vorcaro, Banco Master and an alleged illicit scheme. Bolsonaro sued; a first-instance court ordered the deputy in May 2026 to pay 20,000 reais in moral damages and publish a retraction. On 8 October 2026 the First Civil Panel of the Federal District and Territories Court of Justice (TJDFT) unanimously dismissed the deputy's appeal, holding that parliamentary immunity does not cover a realistic AI image of a nonexistent event presented without a clear warning, and that the association harmed Bolsonaro's honour and image. The judgment was made public on 20 October 2026.

Core concern Low reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · 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

11 Feb 2026Event location unknownUnidentified image tool

Tokyo police say a man used generative AI to turn a woman's junior-high gym photo into nude images for a high-school student; man arrested, student referred

Tokyo's Metropolitan Police Department arrested a 32-year-old company employee on 1 August 2026 and referred a 17-year-old high-school student to prosecutors, on suspicion of defamation and public display of child pornography. According to the police, on 11 February 2026 the two, acting together, used generative AI to turn a photo of a woman in her 40s, taken in her first year of junior high school in gym clothes, into two fake nude images, and posted them to a group on social media; the student had asked the man to make the edits. Police say the man is also suspected of posting similar edits of three women in their 20s, that neither suspect knew the women, and that about 3,800 obscene images and videos were found on his phone. The Yomiuri Shimbun, citing investigative sources, reports that police believe he made about 300 such images of women in athletics uniforms or gym clothes and posted about 100, about half at the student's request, and that he admitted the allegations.

Core concern Medium reported severity Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources · Added 21/10/2026

Oct 2026IndiaUnidentified Google AI tool (reported)

Gujarat railway police say two workers were detained on a train with fake tickets a man made for them with a Google AI app for Rs 2,000

In October 2026 a ticket inspector on the Somnath/Veraval-Jabalpur Express, after the train left Wankaner in Gujarat, found that two passengers were carrying fake tickets on their mobile phones; they were handed to the Railway Protection Force and railway police in Rajkot registered a case and detained them. According to Gujarat Samachar, the two were factory workers, one of them a minor, who wanted to go home and asked a man working at their factory for tickets; he made the tickets with the help of AI and Photoshop and charged Rs 2,000. Gujarat Samachar English reports that the railway police investigation traced the forged tickets to a Google AI application and WhatsApp, and that the man who made them was also arrested. The reports differ on the workers' role: Bombay Samachar says they were cheated and at first suspected nothing, while Gujarat Samachar English says all three accused, including the two passengers, were remanded to judicial custody. Gujarat Samachar English dates the check 15 October, and the reports name no specific AI product.

Core concern Medium reported severity Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 20/10/2026

18 Oct 2026AustraliaClaude (reported)

Sydney: man arrested and remanded after Interpol flagged his Claude chatbot conversation in which, police allege, he threatened a childcare shooting

A man in Sydney's south was arrested on Sunday 18 October 2026 after Interpol flagged his interactions with Anthropic's Claude chatbot, and was charged with using a carriage service to menace, harass or offend, the Sydney Morning Herald reported from Sutherland Local Court on 19 October. According to a police facts sheet tendered to the court, he told the chatbot that he would shoot up the local daycare; the court heard that he had been using Claude's voice mode and had said he planned to shoot several children at a childcare centre. He was remanded in custody for a mental health assessment after prosecutors argued against release. His lawyer told the court the remarks were a stress- and frustration-induced tirade after he had tried to use Claude to help treat an ear infection, that there was no weight behind them, and that he believed the conversation was private. The court heard his Claude account was suspended. How the conversation reached Interpol is not reported. The Australia Today reported on 24 October, citing Channel 10, that he has pleaded not guilty.

Core concern Medium reported severity Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources · Added 19/10/2026

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.