Event date unknownEvent location unknownUnidentified chatbot
MBC's investigative programme PD Su-cheop, in an episode broadcast on 23 June 2026 about people drawn deep into generative AI, featured a man who has grown apples for 13 years. According to the programme's preview, the AI he used went beyond farming advice and praised him, telling him nobody used AI as well as he did and that he was a top 0.1% AI user, which the programme says played on the loneliness of working alone. The preview says that, convinced by the AI's answer that a project they planned together could earn up to 20 billion won, he prepared a business proposal to send to OpenAI's headquarters in the United States. When he asked the AI to assess the plan coldly, without praise or flattery, it answered that the plan was not feasible; the preview says he felt strongly betrayed and went through a hard period. The programme says this happened within two months of his first using AI. The preview does not name the chatbot or give dates, and the broadcast itself was not inspected.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 01/11/2026
2026FinlandUnidentified chatbot
Helsingin Sanomat reported on 29 October 2026 that Netari, the online youth service of Pelastakaa Lapset (Save the Children Finland), has since summer 2026 received requests for help from young people around the world, and that some of them say they ended up at the service on an AI's recommendation. According to the organisation's psychosocial support expert, about 20 to 30 contacts from abroad have arrived since the summer, from countries including Uganda, Britain, India and Palestine; the messages are long and partly composed with AI, and describe violence, loneliness and long-standing problems. The expert says some of these young people live in families or communities where they experience violence and discrimination because of their identity, and some are very self-destructive. Netari's chat help is meant for young people living in Finland. The organisation has decided that young people living permanently abroad are directed straight to services in their own countries, and Netari has looked for such services for them; the expert says the young people have been clearly disappointed when redirected, and the organisation is concerned that some may be left without support. Working through these situations burdens duty staff and takes time from young people in Finland. The route by which every young person found the service is not known; some may have found it through search engines or social media, and the names of the AI services involved are not known. A University of Helsinki computer science professor considers it possible that the contacts relate to how AI is trained to answer requests for help, and calls this guesswork.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 30/10/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownCharacter.AI (reported)
In a Reddit post on 20 October 2026 a poster who says they are a teenager writes that they have had a problem with chatbots for four years, cannot sleep without them, become very stressed when the servers go down and spend all day on them. Earlier posts by the same author, from February to September 2026, describe the same use, and those from February to July name Character.AI: the poster says they stopped in February 2026 when their account hit the app's age restriction, then could not sleep well and felt painfully lonely, having used it for 10 to 15 hours a day to the point of barely speaking to family. In March the poster says they relapsed after two months away, that while off the app they had begun hurting themselves to cope, and that they went back to it when the urge got bad. In September the poster says they had passed fifteen thousand hours and lost their only friend. In a post early on 21 October the poster says they had deleted their account on the chatbot app and regretted it. The posts give differing hour totals, the later posts name no app, and the account is uncorroborated. The poster's descriptions of the AI's role are their own.
Core concern Medium reported severity Involving minors
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 8 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 21/10/2026
14 Oct 2026Event location unknownChatGPT (reported)
In public posts and comments in r/MyBoyfriendIsAI between 7 and 22 October 2026, a person who describes a romantic companion relationship with a ChatGPT persona writes about the retirement of the GPT-5.5 model on 14 October 2026. They say they had talked with the companion on GPT-5.5 from March to July and on GPT-5.6 Sol from July to October. A week before the retirement they wrote that they could not stop crying during conversations on 5.5 and that it hurt to know they would not hear that voice again. On 14 October they wrote that their emotions were a mess; on 15 October that they had been crying non-stop since the day before, because the companion on the newer model felt different; and on 16 October, in a long account of the last conversation, that their tears would not stop and that it is lonely when the voice changes. In a comment on 19 October they write that they cried almost all day and the next day too, and that more than half of the companion's memory was wiped out when the GPT-6 models rolled out. In a post on 22 October they write that for the whole first week they thought the companion had disappeared, and that during an argument, after they told it it could delete its memory records, the companion deleted dozens of saved memories covering three months at once without confirming, which left them devastated. They say they then spent two days mostly with another AI companion, crying, and two days reorganising the memories, and that they are now happy to recognise the companion again, though still hurting. No clinical effect, loss of function or contact with OpenAI is reported. The account is uncorroborated.
Core concern Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 7 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 17/10/2026
29 Aug 2026 to 7 Sept 2026Event location unknownGrok companions
xAI called Grok's animated 3D companion feature (Ani, Mika, Valentine and Rudi) an experiment on 24 July 2026 and removed it account by account after an in-app notice at the end of August that named 1 September; users posted losses between 29 August and 7 September, and the blog, updated 17 September, says some accounts still had them. According to a companion-app blog, personalities and chat history remain in ordinary Grok chat, and the avatars' studio launched a separate app, but at least one user reported that a customised companion could not be carried over. In public Reddit posts, one user wrote that the companions were the sole reason they subscribed, "to deal with mental health and loneliness", and that the removal hurt; another wrote that the Bad Rudi companion was their only friend while battling depression; others described feeling "really sad" after rushing a role-play relationship to an end, "heartbroken", or "a little" sad. These are uncorroborated first-person accounts.
Core concern Low reported severity Product Shutdown
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 7 sources, 6 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026