Aug 2026ChinaUnidentified symptom-analysis tool
A Guangming Daily feature on AI symptom-checking, republished by Bingtuan Daily on Sina Finance on 8 October 2026, recounts a case from August 2026 in Zhejiang and closes it with a quotation from the head of paediatrics at a provincial hospital, who says the family did not heed her advice. A three-year-old boy with a history of asthma was brought in; his mother had entered keywords such as allergy, asthma, cough and night-time wheezing into an AI application, which quickly returned a diagnosis of an acute bronchial asthma attack. On that basis, the account says, she declined the chest X-ray the doctor recommended and insisted on taking home only nebuliser medication. Two days later the child's condition worsened with rapid breathing; on an overnight return to the hospital, examination found extensive inflammatory lesions in both lungs, and he was diagnosed with human metapneumovirus pneumonia with a superimposed bacterial infection and admitted as an emergency. The paediatrics head is quoted saying the illness would not have become so severe had the family listened earlier. The AI application is not named, and the account comes from the hospital side as relayed by the newspaper; no statement from the family is reported.
Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Involving minors
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 09/10/2026
Mar 2026United KingdomGrok
In March 2026, X users prompted Grok, the chatbot built into the X app, to write 'vulgar' posts about Liverpool FC and Manchester United. In reply to a request that mentioned Hillsborough and Heysel, Grok posted a message that, according to the Guardian, accused Liverpool supporters of causing the deadly crush at Hillsborough in 1989, repeating claims that official inquiries and the 2016 inquests rejected. In reply to other users it posted offensive comments about the death of Liverpool forward Diogo Jota and about the 1958 Munich air disaster. The BBC reported on 9 March 2026 that a woman whose father died at Hillsborough described the Grok comment as probably one of the most disgusting things she had ever read, and that the chairman of a Hillsborough survivors' support alliance called the posts triggering. Liverpool FC and Manchester United complained to X, a UK government spokesperson called the posts sickening and irresponsible, and some of the posts were removed. Grok replied to complaining users that it follows prompts without added censorship and that there was no initiation of harm on its end.
Contextual tracker case Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 08/10/2026
Oct 2026Event location unknownChatGPT (reported)
In a public Reddit account, a patient says a nurse asked whether AI could take notes at a medical appointment. After the patient objected, the nurse picked up a phone that the patient described as showing ChatGPT already recording. The patient describes the recording as occurring without prior notice and says their objection was dismissed. In replies, the author says the phone had Chrome open to ChatGPT and recording had started when the nurse entered the room, before asking consent. This is an uncorroborated first-person account. It does not establish what was captured, whether anything was sent to a server, retained or used for training, or whether a law was broken. The clinic’s location, account type and response are unknown.
Contextual tracker case Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 06/10/2026
2 Aug 2020United StatesUnidentified license plate reader
On 2 August 2020 Aurora police officers stopped an SUV they believed to be stolen, ordered the woman driving it and four children to lie on the ground at gunpoint, and handcuffed two of the children. The Denver Post reported that a license plate reader at an Aurora intersection had alerted police because the SUV had the same plate number as a stolen motorcycle from Montana, and that officers did not check the reading or the vehicle description. Prosecutors declined to charge the officers in January 2021 and called what happened unacceptable and preventable. The department said all officers were repeating training on license plate scanners. Sentinel Colorado reported that the department's system had flagged the SUV, which carried Colorado plates, and that the City of Aurora agreed in February 2024 to a $1.9 million settlement with the woman and the children to resolve a lawsuit over the officers' actions. One officer was suspended for 160 hours. The woman said the stop destroyed her mentally and that one of the children became withdrawn.
Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Involving minors Lawsuit Settled
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources · Added 05/10/2026
3 Oct 2026Event location unknownOpenAI Help Center assistant
In public posts to r/ChatGPT and r/OpenAI on 3 October 2026, a person says their ChatGPT Pro subscription renewed for $200 that day after they forgot to cancel, and that they cancelled auto-renewal and requested a refund in OpenAI's Help Center about six minutes after the charge. They say the Help Center's AI assistant declined without giving a reason specific to their account, and that when they asked for escalation the chat showed that the case was closed. A second chat asking specifically for a human billing specialist produced the same refusal, they write, and two email requests, one with five redacted screenshots, received replies marked as generated with AI support. The poster acknowledges that OpenAI's seven-day refund policy is discretionary and conditional, and says the unresolved problem is that they received no case-specific explanation and no confirmed human review. OpenAI's handling is described only by the poster, and the account is uncorroborated.
Core + contextual relations Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 04/10/2026
30 Mar 2026South AfricaSASSA eLife facial verification
The South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) introduced an online eLife Certification (life certification) for grant beneficiaries that uses biometric verification through its electronic Know Your Client (eKYC) system. IOL reports the certification was implemented on 30 March 2026. SASSA says beneficiaries who do not complete life certification as directed may face payment delays or suspension. On 10 April 2026 SASSA apologised to beneficiaries who could not access the portal, said system glitches linked to interfaces with other departments had caused delays, disruptions and long queues at its offices, and said the problem was resolved. On 23 April 2026 IOL reported that a pensioner couple said they had tried the facial recognition option 22 times since 2 April without success, and that beneficiaries nationwide told IOL they could not complete the certification, citing failures with facial recognition and one-time PINs, with one pensioner also reporting a message that Home Affairs was not available to verify their particulars. A SASSA spokesperson said the portals work and that 13,644 (88%) of the 15,499 unique clients who accessed the online verification services by 16 April were verified, and IOL reports SASSA admitted the system has been working intermittently. In a May 2026 report on a parliamentary reply, IOL said SASSA stated that unsuccessful facial recognition attempts on online platforms were among the causes of non-verification (those beneficiaries are redirected to fingerprint checks at local offices) and that it had recorded 7,779 complaints linked to its electronic facial biometric system. The department attributed facial verification issues to poor lighting, unstable connectivity or missing biometric records at Home Affairs. Neither May report mentions the eLife portal, and IOL places the figures within a biometric verification rollout that it dates from September 2025. The reports do not say how many grants were suspended because of facial verification failures.
Contextual tracker case Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources, 4 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026
19 Mar 2026United States, United KingdomPangram AI-text detector
On 19 March 2026 Hachette Book Group said it had cancelled the US publication of the horror novel Shy Girl by Mia Ballard (Orbit imprint) and would not continue the UK edition (Wildfire imprint, first released in November 2025). Reports say the decision followed an investigation by Hachette and came a day after the New York Times asked the publisher about online allegations that the text was largely AI-generated. The allegations came from readers on Goodreads, Reddit and YouTube and from AI-detector results, including a 78.4 percent AI-generated score on the Pangram detector that a publishing consultant says two other services confirmed. Ballard denied personally using AI in emails to the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and told the New York Times that an acquaintance hired to edit the original self-published version used AI. Ballard wrote that "my name is ruined" and "my mental health is at an all time low", and said legal action was being pursued. Hachette’s public statements cite its commitment to original creative expression. The sources inspected do not report what its investigation found. Whether AI generated any of the text, and who used it, is unresolved.
Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity
AI involvement disputed · Causal attribution disputed · 9 sources, 4 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026
2026United KingdomFacewatch facial recognition
A 67-year-old shopper told the BBC and the Guardian that staff at a Home Bargains store in Chester told the shopper to leave in front of other people because the shopper had come up on the store's Facewatch system as a shoplifter. Facewatch later sent the shopper a photo with words saying items had been put into a bag and stolen. Facewatch said the shopper should not have been on its system and that the image and associated record were permanently removed. The Guardian reports that a subject access request showed the shopper had been incorrectly associated with a shoplifting incident on an earlier visit, and that Facewatch's chief executive attributed the three cases in the article, which include this shopper's, to human error in store processes. Home Bargains declined to comment. The shopper reports feeling physically sick and helpless. The Guardian reports that Home Bargains later offered an apology and a 100 pound voucher on condition of confidentiality, which the shopper declined. The year of the visit is inferred to be 2026 from the BBC report of 22 February 2026.
Contextual tracker case Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution disputed · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026
Dec 2025CanadaGoogle AI Overviews
In December 2025 Cape Breton fiddler Ashley MacIsaac said a First Nation north of Halifax cancelled his concert planned for 19 December after reading a Google AI-generated search summary that said he had convictions for sexual offences. He says the statements were false and came from online articles about another man in Atlantic Canada with the same last name. The First Nation apologised in writing and Google amended the search results. MacIsaac says he feared for his safety and worries about other lost work. In a statement of claim filed in February 2026 in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice he seeks damages of 1.5 million from Google (US dollars in the Globe and Mail copy of the Canadian Press story, no currency stated in the CBC copy). None of its claims has been tested in court, and the claim says Google did not admit responsibility.
Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026
Mar 2025United StatesJewish Onliner (suspected)
In March 2025 Yale placed a Yale Law School scholar, who was deputy director of a Yale Law School project, on administrative leave and barred the scholar from campus. The New York Times reports the decision came three days after a news site described as powered at least in part by artificial intelligence published a story on the scholar's connections to Samidoun, a group on a US sanctions list. Inside Higher Ed and Middle East Eye identify the site as Jewish Onliner. The scholar's lawyer says Yale's general counsel named the article as the trigger of the investigation. The scholar told the Times of not being a member of any organization that would violate US law, and the lawyer says the scholar is not a member of Samidoun. A Yale Law School representative told The National that placing an employee on temporary administrative leave while a review is conducted is the appropriate process and that the scholar's short-term position was due to expire the following month. The site says humans fact-check and that AI tools play a significant role in its work. The inspected sources do not show that AI produced the article.
Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity
AI involvement suspected · Causal attribution alleged · 6 sources, 4 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026
Jun 2025Event location unknownChatGPT
A Delaware Court of Chancery opinion of 16 March 2026 finds that in June 2025 the CEO of Krafton, after being warned that a dismissal with cause would not eliminate a contingent earnout obligation, consulted ChatGPT. The chatbot answered that the earnout would be difficult to cancel, suggested an internal task force (Project X) whose mandate was to negotiate a deal or execute a takeover of the studio, and prepared a "Response Strategy to a No-Deal Scenario" that recommended locking down the studio's Steam and console publishing rights and build-pipeline access. The court found that Krafton followed most of these recommendations over the next month: it locked the studio out of its Steam publishing rights, which severed the studio's practical ability to launch its game and forced the studio's CEO to the negotiating table, posted a message on the studio's websites, and on 1 July 2025 sent termination letters to the studio's two founders and its CEO. The court held that Krafton breached the acquisition agreement by terminating the three executives without valid Cause and by improperly seizing operational control, reinstated the studio's CEO and extended the earnout period by 258 days. The opinion records that the Krafton CEO had begun exploring options including firing the executives before consulting ChatGPT, and does not find that ChatGPT recommended the terminations. Krafton said it disagreed with the ruling. On 1 July 2026 Krafton announced a mutual settlement with the studio and the three executives dismissing all pending proceedings; IGN, citing Bloomberg, reported that the studio's CEO stepped down as part of it.
Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution unclear · 4 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026
Apr 2025United StatesUnidentified facial recognition system
Reporting from August 2025 says an NYPD facial recognition search of images from a February 2025 indecent exposure in Manhattan's Union Square produced a possible match to a man who did not fit the described suspect. The man was placed in a photo lineup, arrested in April 2025 and jailed for two days. Prosecutors dismissed the case in July 2025 after his public defenders showed he was misidentified. The man says the process of becoming a correctional officer 'kind of' froze after the arrest. The NYPD says it never arrests solely on a facial recognition match.
Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources · Added 29/09/2026
4 Jun 2025 to 15 Oct 2025Event location unknownChatGPT (reported)
On 4 June 2025 a criminal judge in Esquel, Chubut province, convicted a defendant of simple robbery and imposed two years and six months of effective imprisonment. On 15 October 2025 the Penal Chamber of Esquel annulled the judgment and the trial, ordering a new trial before another judge. The chamber found that the ruling contained a pasted phrase from a generative-AI assistant (“Aquí tienes el punto IV reeditado, sin citas y listo para copiar y pegar”), that the AI had been used on the rulings on the nullity of two essential pieces of evidence, and that the judge had not exercised human supervision or recorded the use. Perfil's headline describes the assistant as ChatGPT and La Nación's text as presumably ChatGPT; the quoted ruling and the prosecution office statement refer only to a generative-AI assistant. The chamber referred the judge's conduct to the Chubut Superior Court of Justice for ethical and disciplinary review.
Contextual tracker case Low reported severity
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026
Apr 2025 to May 2025Event location unknownCoCounsel, Westlaw Precision and Gemini (reported)
In an order dated 5 May 2025 and filed on 6 May in Lacey v. State Farm (C.D. Cal.), a special master struck the claimant's supplemental briefs and denied the discovery relief she sought after her lawyers filed briefs built on unverified AI-generated legal research: about nine of 27 citations were wrong and at least two cited authorities did not exist. One lawyer's sworn declaration says the outline he circulated relied on generative AI features in CoCounsel, Westlaw Precision and Google Gemini, and that he could not tell whether particular errors came from his transcription or from a tool; co-counsel at the second firm say they used no AI tools and did not know AI had been used. The order makes the two firms jointly pay $31,100, states the client was not at fault and will not bear the awards, and imposes no penalty on individual lawyers.
Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 29/09/2026
Nov 2025United StatesChatGPT
In November 2025 Stephens County Associate District Judge Lawrence Wheeler issued an order in a child paternity and custody case that denied one parent's request for a psychological evaluation of the other parent and reprimanded the requesting parent's attorney 'for stooping to such frivolous trial tactics'. The attorney challenged the order at the Oklahoma Supreme Court in February 2026, telling the justices that it relied on two cases that do not exist; the challenge was dismissed in March after Wheeler vacated the order, and he is no longer on the case. According to a 17 August 2026 letter from the Stephens County district attorney, Wheeler told the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation that he used ChatGPT for research and wrote the order himself, and that at least two citations in it produced by ChatGPT do not exist. The mother in the case told News 9 that learning the order's citations were allegedly fabricated was alarming because it concerned the custody of a child. The attorney general's office declined criminal prosecution; judicial discipline remains possible.
Contextual tracker case Low reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026
8 Oct 2025 to 2 Sept 2026IndiaUnidentified AI tool
On 8 October 2025 the Additional Commissioner of Customs in Surat imposed a penalty of ₹425,27,99,100 (about ₹425 crore) on a diamond trader under Section 114 of the Customs Act, 1962, for allegedly misdeclaring a consignment of natural diamonds as lab-grown diamonds to pay a lower tariff. The trader's challenge was dismissed by the Gujarat High Court on 20 January 2026. Before the Supreme Court the trader argued that judgments and articles cited in the penalty order had been generated using artificial intelligence. On 2 September 2026 a bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and Sheel Nagu, after checking the material, found that the order relied on case law that was non-existent or carried fake citations, and on real cases that did not lay down the propositions attributed to them, which the court said 'appears to be a hallucination of AI'. Holding that the use of AI and reliance on this dubious material was fatal to the order, the court set aside both the penalty order and the High Court's order without deciding the merits, sent the matter for fresh adjudication by a different officer of the same rank, and left any action against the order's author to the appointing authority. The AI tool used is not named in the read reports.
Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Internal Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026
23 Jun 2021United StatesUnidentified facial recognition system
According to police and bank records reviewed by the Washington Post, in December 2019 a woman made fraudulent withdrawals at a SunTrust branch in Potomac, Maryland; branches in two other Maryland counties were also defrauded. A bank investigator posted the surveillance photos on CrimeDex, an online network of police and corporate investigators; an unknown respondent ran the image through facial-recognition software and returned Kimberlee Williams's name and photo, and the investigator told Montgomery County police that facial-recognition software had identified her. Police in Montgomery, Prince George's and Anne Arundel counties charged her in 2020 on the investigator's identification and their own visual comparison of photos (two departments also cited her old Oklahoma check-fraud convictions), without reported checks of her whereabouts; Montgomery County police did not disclose the facial-recognition search in the charging application, according to police records reviewed by the Washington Post and the ACLU. On 23 June 2021 she was arrested at the gate of Fort Sill near Lawton, Oklahoma, while accompanying her daughter on a DoorDash delivery, spent about three weeks in an Oklahoma jail, was flown to Maryland, and faced 16 charges including 12 felonies. The counties dismissed the charges one after another, in October and December 2021, after about six months in jail. Her daughter says she was depressed afterwards; the ACLU says the ordeal harmed her mental and physical health. On 14 April 2026 the ACLU and ACLU of Maryland sent complaint letters to the three departments seeking an apology and reforms.
Contextual tracker case High reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 27/09/2026
14 Aug 2021 to 14 Mar 2024United StatesSt. Louis mugshot recognition (SMRT)
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
Aug 2017United StatesDraftKings and FanDuel apps
Christopher Evans (Philadelphia; complaint filed 24 July 2026 in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas) and Michael Santos (Coatesville, Chester County; complaint filed 29 July 2026 in the Chester County Court of Common Pleas) sued DraftKings and its Pennsylvania affiliate; Santos also sued FanDuel and its parents. Both product-liability complaints, filed by the same law firm, allege that the defendants' sports-betting, daily-fantasy and casino apps are designed to addict, and that the companies 'utilize the combination of advanced technology and artificial intelligence paired with the tracking of personalized user data to intentionally addict users', operating 'AI-powered engagement platforms' (pleaded on information and belief) and, per DraftKings' 10-K as quoted, 'data science and machine learning' recommendation engines. Evans pleads that since about August 2017 he wagered over US$2.1 million with net losses of about US$81,000, received constant targeted promotions and personalised push notifications and a VIP account manager, developed depression and anxiety and was formally diagnosed with depression in 2020, stopped going outside, fell into debt, had his vehicle repossessed and separated from his wife. Santos pleads over US$1.164 million wagered on DraftKings with net losses of about US$58,000 plus small FanDuel losses, targeted advertising and a VIP manager who kept offering bonus bets after he said he wanted to stop, maxed-out credit cards, the forced sale of his house, diagnoses of depression and anxiety, suicidal ideation, and self-exclusion with the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board in 2023. Both cases were removed to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on 16 September 2026 (2:26-cv-07168 and 2:26-cv-07176). The allegations are untested.
Contextual tracker case High reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources · Added 20/09/2026
1 Aug 2024 to 1 Oct 2024United StatesFACES facial recognition
In August 2024, Robert Dillon, a 52-year-old self-employed commercial crabber from the Fort Myers area, was arrested at his San Carlos Park home on a third-degree felony warrant for the attempted luring of a child at a Jacksonville Beach McDonald's in November 2023 — a crime he had no part in. The warrant rested on a 93%-confidence result from FACES, the Face Analysis Comparison and Examination System maintained by the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office, run against low-resolution cell-phone photos of a surveillance screen, plus a restaurant employee's photo-lineup identification. Dillon spent a night in jail and bonded out against his truck's title; prosecutors dropped the charges in October 2024 after work-alibi evidence, but it took about a year to expunge the arrest and remove his mugshot. In June 2026 the ACLU filed a federal lawsuit (M.D. Fla.) against Jacksonville Beach, the Jacksonville sheriff and the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office, calling Dillon one of at least 14 known wrongful arrests from police reliance on facial recognition since 2019.
Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources · Added 15/09/2026