23 Feb 2024United KingdomMetropolitan Police live facial recognition
On 23 February 2024 Shaun Thompson, a London community volunteer whom the 2026 judgment describes as 39, walked past a Metropolitan Police live facial recognition deployment near London Bridge station. The High Court records as not in dispute that the system detected a high level of facial similarity between images of him and the watchlist image of his brother, who was the subject of an outstanding arrest warrant, and generated an alert. According to the court's account, officers stopped, detained and questioned him and made him prove his identity, and when he declined to have his fingerprints taken he was threatened with arrest; he says the experience left him angry and distressed. Officers ended the engagement after checking police records about his brother, and he confirmed his identity with a passport photograph on his phone. Big Brother Watch, whose director was his co-claimant, says he was held for almost 30 minutes despite showing several identity documents. His judicial review claim about the stop, issued in May 2024, was withdrawn under a consent order agreed on 18 December 2024 on terms including a settlement sum paid to him. An amended challenge to the Met's revised live facial recognition policy of September 2024, brought with Big Brother Watch's director, was dismissed by the Divisional Court on 21 April 2026; the court said it was not judging the merits of the technology, and the claimants announced plans to appeal.
Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Lawsuit Dismissed
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 4 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 26/10/2026
Event date unknownUnited KingdomAnima Annie
Fortune reported on 20 July 2025 that a London patient, a healthy man in his mid-20s, had recently received a letter inviting him to diabetic eye screening although he had never been diagnosed with diabetes. He told Fortune he briefly worried he had been diagnosed without knowing, then assumed an admin error. The next day a nurse at a routine blood test questioned the diagnosis and showed him the notes on the system, which were AI-generated summaries. In his full records, which Fortune reviewed, the entry that introduced the diagnosis was listed as a summary 'generated by Annie AI', the tool of Anima Health. It said he had presented with chest pain and shortness of breath from likely angina due to coronary artery disease, that he had been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and was on medications with dosages, and it gave the source document's address as a fictitious 'Health Hospital' on '456 Care Road' in 'Health City'. According to the patient and other records Fortune reviewed, none of these details was accurate; the entry appeared around the time he had attended hospital with tonsillitis, which it did not mention. Fortune writes that the invitation was presumably based on the erroneous summary. An NHS representative told Fortune the practice makes limited use of supervised AI, that Anima only suggests codes and a summary to a human reviewer, and that the error was a one-off human error: a summariser had spotted the mistake but, distracted, saved the original version instead of the corrected one. Anima Health did not respond to Fortune.
Contextual tracker case Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 26/10/2026
2025United StatesUnidentified image tool (suspected)
The Guardian reported on 2 August 2025 that a London-based academic who rented a Manhattan apartment through Airbnb in 2025 was accused by the host of more than 12,000 pounds of damage, supported by photos including a cracked coffee table. She says differences between two photos of the table show they were digitally manipulated or AI-generated. Airbnb first told her to reimburse 5,314 pounds after reviewing the photos, then, five days after Guardian Money asked about the case, accepted her appeal, credited 500 pounds and, after she refused an 854-pound offer, refunded her booking cost of 4,269 pounds, and the host's negative review of her was taken down. Airbnb apologised. Airbnb told the host it could not verify the images he submitted and warned him. The host did not respond to the Guardian. No source establishes that AI was used.
Contextual tracker case Low reported severity
AI involvement suspected · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026
6 Aug 2026United KingdomFacewatch facial recognition
On 6 August 2026 Matt Arnold, a comedy promoter, was refused service at a self-service till in Sainsbury's East Dulwich store and escorted out by two managers, who cited an incident earlier in the week. He says a staff member told him he had been identified by the AI and that he saw a CCTV monitor alert with a red circle around his face as he left. Sainsbury's apologised the next day, said the cause was human error rather than the facial recognition technology, and paused its Facewatch system at the store while it investigates. Facewatch says a correct alert was sent and mishandled in store; the BBC reports Sainsbury's claim that staff targeted the wrong person after a separate flag. Whose face the system matched is unresolved.
Contextual tracker case Low reported severity Internal Action
AI involvement disputed · Causal attribution disputed · 2 sources · Added 16/09/2026