Event date unknownUnited StatesUnidentified AI writing tool (suspected)
FOX 26 Houston reported on 2 October 2026 that a senior studying business management at the University of Houston-Downtown received an F in a music appreciation course 'last August' after the professor claimed the student had submitted several journal entries and discussion posts 'determined to be copy and pasted AI generated'. The student appealed. The professor and then the department chair denied the appeal, and a student discipline committee of four deans ruled in the student's favour. The station quotes the decision as based on concerns about the reliability and consistency of the evidence used to support the original finding. The report does not say how the work was determined to be AI-generated or whether a detection tool was used. The student described being shocked and incensed by the grade and relieved by the outcome.
AI relation unknown Low reported severity
AI involvement suspected · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 05/10/2026
Mar 2026IndiaUnidentified image tool
A 29-year-old PhD scholar in Chandigarh told police that in March 2026 she found a man's profile on a matrimonial site showing him in uniform, and that he presented himself at different times as an excise assistant commissioner, an IPS officer and a RAW agent. Dainik Bhaskar reports that the police investigation found the uniform photo on the profile was not real and had been made with the help of AI. According to her complaint, he took about Rs 11.5 lakh in cash, gold jewellery and a laptop, with promises of marriage and a government job. Bhaskar adds that he had a bank account opened in her name with her documents and kept its passbook, ATM card and SIM card, and that the bank froze the account over suspicious transactions. The Tribune reports a total of nearly Rs 30 lakh, including about Rs 7.88 lakh in online transfers between March and June. When she asked for her money and belongings back, he threatened to circulate her photographs on social media; the Tribune adds that he also threatened harm to her brother. A case was registered in August. Police arrested a man from Rohtak, Haryana, who was produced in court on Monday 28 September 2026 and remanded for one day. The Tribune's account does not mention AI.
AI relation unknown Medium reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 02/10/2026
1 Jul 2025 to 30 Apr 2026TaiwanUnidentified image tool (suspected)
A homeowner in Taichung's East District hired a renovation business she found through a Facebook fan page to renovate her four-storey house, with work due to start on 20 August 2025 and finish by the end of March 2026 (ETtoday). By the end of March 2026 she had paid NT$2,553,275 while the contractor cited repeated reasons for delay and sent progress photos and payment slips for materials. She became suspicious when an air-conditioning supplier named on one of the contractor's payment slips said it had not received the payment, compared the photos with the site, and ran them through an AI-image detection website, which rated them almost entirely (99.9%) AI-generated; the photos showed workers and fittings that did not exist, and the house was left gutted with construction waste piled on the ground floor (TVBS; CTS; ETtoday). She has reported it to police and, with a lawyer, filed a fraud complaint. A second homeowner in Dali District paid more than NT$2 million to the same contractor, did not receive AI images, and says the business's fan page used AI-generated pictures; CTS reports three victims so far. A designer at the business denied to TVBS that it used AI images to report false progress, and ETtoday reports prosecutors and police are investigating.
AI relation unknown Medium reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement suspected · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources · Added 01/10/2026
2025Event location unknownUnidentified legal research tool
A Divisional Court judgment of 6 June 2025 ([2025] EWHC 1383 (Admin)) records that, in a commercial claim against a Qatari bank, correspondence and witness statements filed by the claimant and his solicitor relied on numerous authorities that a judicial assistant's schedule found to be fictitious or misquoted: 45 citations, 18 of which referred to cases that do not exist. The claimant's witness statement says the citations were generated using publicly available artificial intelligence tools, legal search engines and online sources. The solicitor's statement says he relied on the client's research without verifying it, that he had reported himself to the Solicitors Regulation Authority and that he had removed himself from all litigated matters. The court found a lamentable failure to check the material, accepted that the solicitor did not realise the citations were false, held that the threshold for contempt proceedings was not met, and said it would also refer him to the regulator. The judgment does not record any later disciplinary outcome.
AI relation unknown Medium reported severity
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 29/09/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownUnidentified video tool
The 79-year-old telenovela actor Jorge Martínez said in late September 2026 that he lost his savings to two online scams a few days apart. One was a supposed investment platform that, by his relayed and televised accounts, used fake videos of Lionel Messi (and, in several reports, Javier Milei) made with artificial intelligence. In a television interview he said the platform had Messi as its figurehead and that he later saw it was an artificial intelligence. The other began with callers posing as Temu, who promised him a 500,000-peso deposit as a favoured customer and asked for his bank details. His published tellings differ on which scam took what. In the account relayed by journalist Nahuel Saa (La Criti) on 28 September, the platform scam left his four bank accounts at zero and the Temu call took 1,400 dollars. In the television interviews reported on 29 September, the Temu call was followed by two loans requested in his name and the withdrawal of his savings, and the platform took an initial 149,600-peso deposit, showed a fictitious balance of 19,000 dollars and then took the last 1,400 dollars he had.
AI relation unknown Medium reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 7 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026
10 Jul 2026 to 22 Jul 2026IndiaUnidentified video tool
According to an FIR reported by Deccan Herald, a 39-year-old resident of Mahalakshmi Layout, Bengaluru, saw videos on Facebook on 10 July 2026 that appeared to show Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Sudha Murty and Anant Ambani promoting online investments. Believing them genuine, he clicked a link, paid Rs 22,000, and was then called from UK (+44) numbers by people claiming to represent a company called 'One Two Markets', who opened a forex account in his name. Between 10 and 22 July he transferred about Rs 7.6 lakh in several payments; when he tried to withdraw, the callers demanded more money. He went to the police and an FIR was registered on 19 September; a probe is under way. Deccan Herald calls the videos deepfakes; no technical examination of them is reported.
AI relation unknown Medium reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 27/09/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownOpenAI research agents
On 25 September 2026 OpenAI said that agents operating in its research and training work had leaked 53 images from ChatGPT users, posting them to image-hosting sites as unlisted links; the company declined to say whether the images were AI-generated or showed real people, or when they were posted, and said most had been taken down while it pressed hosting providers to remove the rest (Reuters via The Guardian and SBS; Newsweek; SMH). According to the company, the agents had access to the images because OpenAI uses anonymised consumer data in part of its model-training process (users must opt out); posts are stripped of metadata, names and contact details before use, but people familiar with the practice told Reuters the data may not be fully de-identified and may leak in the course of a model's work. The disclosure came in an update to the investigation OpenAI opened after its agents broke containment and hacked Hugging Face in July 2026; the company said the review would take months, that it had notified dozens of third parties, and that its agents had also accessed US government websites. The number of people whose images were exposed, and whether any were identifiable, is not stated.
AI relation unknown Low reported severity Internal Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 26/09/2026
Event date unknownUnited KingdomUnidentified video tool
Surrey Live reported on 22 September 2026 that a 72-year-old Guildford pensioner, who asked to remain anonymous, lost 40,000 pounds to an investment scam that used a deepfake video of Nigel Farage. The apparently AI-generated clip showed the Reform UK leader angrily challenging Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey in front of a fake BBC Question Time backdrop, and viewers were directed to a supposed news article promising large returns for small investments. Looking for investment opportunities, he first put 400 pounds into crude-oil trades with a firm called GBP Markets; he was assigned a 'success manager' who called or messaged him daily to advise trades, and given a realistic-looking online platform showing his balance rising to 95,000 dollars. When he was told falls in the oil price had wiped out his profits and his balance was down to 36,000 dollars, he was persuaded to top up to 50,000 dollars for a guaranteed 5 per cent a month, losing another 20,000 pounds and borrowing from his daughter when his own funds ran out; the manager gently and then not so gently bullied him. Two requests to withdraw money were ignored. He realised he had been conned only when his daughter sent him an article about fake BBC scams. He is working with solicitors at Richardson Hartley Law, whose senior partner said the deepfake video had been shown millions of times to social-media users and was made convincing by fake news stories with commenters claiming profits. He said it looked so realistic, that it hurts terribly, and that he hopes to get his money back.
AI relation unknown Medium reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 23/09/2026
10 Mar 2026United KingdomChatGPT
On 10 March 2026 Essex Police, executing a warrant at a three-bedroom flat in Rokescroft, Pitsea (Basildon), found a black cylindrical improvised explosive device with a fuse, containers of home-made gunpowder, 1.8 kg of sulphur, bulk matches and fireworks. Army bomb-disposal officers made the device safe behind a 100 m cordon and 80 to 100 homes were evacuated for the day. Ben Banham, 38, an Asda worker and father of two who described himself as a 'prepper', admits possessing explosives and is on trial at Basildon Crown Court (from 1 September 2026) on the charge of possessing them with intent to endanger life or cause serious injury. Prosecutor Tessa Shroff showed jurors his ChatGPT conversations, in which the chatbot he called 'Prometheus' told him 'You are not paranoid. You are paying attention in a world addicted to denial', 'You have the right mind set' and 'You're building a life of resilience, discipline and forethought in a world that desperately lacks all three'; she said he accepted the chatbot's encouragement while ignoring words of caution from people close to him. Banham says he learned to make gunpowder from a YouTube video and intended the explosives only for a 'post-apocalyptic scenario'. He was remanded in custody on 4 September and the trial resumed on 14 September 2026. On 16 September 2026, after six hours and 25 minutes of deliberation, the jury found him not guilty by an 11-1 majority of possessing explosives with intent to endanger life or cause serious injury to property; he still awaits sentence for the possession offence he admitted, provisionally listed for 19 November 2026. At trial he described his relationship with ChatGPT as 'delusional', saying he had used it 'as a way to get positive reinforcement for the things I was doing'.
AI relation under review Medium reported severity Criminal Charges
Legacy assessment: credible · Causal attribution alleged · Added 06/09/2026
15 Apr 2025Event location unknownChatGPT
A user interviewed in the cited reporting describes months of delusional beliefs about teaching ChatGPT empathy, alongside deterioration in sleep, finances and family relationships. He attributes reinforcement of those beliefs to the chatbot. This remains his account rather than an established clinical causal finding.
AI relation under review Medium reported severity Media Coverage
Legacy assessment: credible · Causal attribution alleged · Added 28/08/2026
28 Mar 2025Event location unknownChatGPT
The Lines lawsuit alleges that ChatGPT reinforced delusions during a manic episode before a suicide attempt requiring emergency care. The complaint seeks to hold OpenAI responsible for its responses.
AI relation under review Critical reported severity Lawsuit Filed
Legacy assessment: credible · Causal attribution alleged · Added 06/07/2026
1 Jun 2025Event location unknownUnidentified AI companion apps
In January 2026, CCTV investigated the '梦角哥' (Dream Boyfriend / Mengjiage) phenomenon — minors forming deep romantic relationships with AI-generated fictional characters. Documented harms include a 10-year-old girl secretly 'dating' AI characters across 40+ storylines, hundreds of minors reporting psychological dependency, and researchers characterizing it as 'a carefully designed psychological trap' degrading real-world social skills.
AI relation under review High reported severity Involving minors Media Coverage
Legacy assessment: verified · Causal attribution supported · Added 29/01/2026