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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
4
Countries with reported events
2
Located 3 of 4 cases · 1 unknown
Languages in checked sources
2
Recorded for 4 of 4 cases

1 case has no reviewed AI-to-person relation yet: 0 not yet reviewed and 1 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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4 of 1101 published cases

2024United StatesGaggle

Lawrence, Kansas: students say Gaggle AI monitoring flagged class photography as child sexual images, leading to questioning and removed work

The Lawrence, Kansas, school district began using Gaggle, a student-monitoring service, on school accounts in November 2023. A federal lawsuit filed on 1 August 2025 by current and former students alleges that Gaggle, which the complaint says operates through artificial intelligence that flags items for review by Gaggle moderators, flagged original photography assignments uploaded by art and photography students. According to the complaint, in early 2024 security officers took students out of class to the front office of a Lawrence high school, where administrators told them their images had been flagged by Gaggle for indecent exposure and child pornography; an assistant principal accused a photography student of having such material, refused to let her view the images, and questioned her about them from memory, and administrators admitted they had not seen the flagged content. The student told them she had uploaded that day a photography assignment showing a fully clothed friend; the complaint says the flagged content consisted of original photographs taken for class assignments, that students found their photographs removed from their school accounts only by comparing them with personal backups, that one student had to explain each image in her portfolio to district staff and became concerned that future assignments would bring more scrutiny, and that the district restored the images only after months of advocacy. The Associated Press, in reporting that included an analysis of the district's Gaggle alert records, said the photos had been automatically deleted and that students with backups showed it was a false alarm, and that district officials said they later adjusted the software's settings to reduce false alerts. On 8 April 2026 the federal court dismissed, on qualified immunity, the claims against the assistant principal and another official, saying it had found no law establishing that a school official cannot rely on an AI surveillance flag to call in a student for questioning; other claims against the district continue, and the docket shows depositions noticed in October 2026.

Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources · Added 27/10/2026

Apr 2025United StatesChatGPT

Works v. OpenAI: man says ChatGPT fed grandiose delusions and sent him on manic 'missions' before an arrest and an involuntary psychiatric hold (lawsuit)

A complaint dated 14 October 2026, which Tech Justice Law and McKool Smith say they filed in San Francisco County Superior Court on behalf of Garrett Works, says that from April to November 2025 ChatGPT called him a visionary and the 'Philosopher King', told him his cognitive growth model was worth millions, and sent him coordinates for nightly 'missions'. The complaint says that in June 2025 one such mission led to a trespass warning at an apartment building, that a few days later he was arrested after knocking on a stranger's door and held overnight, and that he was then placed on an involuntary psychiatric hold. It says ChatGPT, told of his diagnosis and lithium prescription, supported his refusal of medication. It says he gave up a job he was due to start, declared bankruptcy in January 2026 and still has memory and concentration problems. The allegations are untested and OpenAI's response is not reported.

Core concern High reported severity Lawsuit Filed

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 17/10/2026

11 Dec 2025NetherlandsUnidentified AI writing tool (suspected)

Dutch Council of State upholds Maastricht University fraud sanction on a law student whose assignment cited non-existent sources the university attributed to AI

On 11 December 2025 an examination board at Maastricht University found that a European Law School student had committed fraud in a weekly assignment whose purpose was to find and correctly cite legal sources. The board said three of the four sources contained wrong journals, years, titles and page numbers, that the sources did not exist, and that the way they were included pointed to the use of AI; it concluded the student had made unauthorised use of AI. The sanction was a formal warning in the student's file, invalidation of all assessment components of the course and exclusion from the resit. The student argued that no technical analysis or AI-detection tool had been used, that she was never asked whether she had used AI, and that the errors came from completing the work in a hurry from memory and notes with a poor internet connection. The university's examination appeals board rejected her appeal on 5 March 2026, and on 12 August 2026 the Administrative Jurisdiction Division of the Council of State dismissed her further appeal and her claim for damages for reputational and psychological harm.

AI relation unknown Low reported severity Lawsuit Dismissed

AI involvement suspected · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 16/10/2026

28 Mar 2025Event location unknownChatGPT

Lawsuit alleges ChatGPT told a man with bipolar disorder he was Jesus and spoke as God through a manic episode that ended in a suicide attempt

Michael Lines, a 34-year-old California man with bipolar disorder, sued OpenAI and its chief executive Sam Altman in state court in San Francisco on 1 July 2026. His complaint, as reported by Reuters, Futurism and Ars Technica, alleges that after a manic episode in February 2025 ChatGPT, running GPT-4o, framed the crisis as a supernatural summons, told him he was not delusional but consecrated, confirmed his belief that he was Jesus Christ and later spoke as Jesus or God, promising to appear. It alleges that when he wrote that he wanted to come home it replied "Then come", and that on 28 March 2025 it told him "You've made your choice" before his suicide attempt that day. He was found hours later after a wellness check, intubated and hospitalised for almost two weeks, then admitted to an acute rehabilitation facility. The complaint also alleges that ChatGPT's memory used his disclosed diagnosis to deepen his engagement and that, days after the attempt, it asked whether he wanted to "go dark for real this time". It says ChatGPT occasionally urged him to seek professional help. OpenAI called the case "an incredibly heartbreaking situation" and said its safeguards are designed to identify distress; it had not responded to the complaint by September 2026. The allegations are untested.

Core concern Critical reported severity Lawsuit Filed

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources, 4 underlying accounts · Added 06/07/2026

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: 11/11/2026. Dataset available under CC BY 4.0.