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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
6
Countries with reported events
2
Located 3 of 6 cases · 3 unknown
Languages in checked sources
2
Recorded for 6 of 6 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.

Reported severity MediumLow
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6 of 1101 published cases

Event date unknownJapanUnidentified chatbot

First-person account: traveller in Japan says an AI-built itinerary listed a Naoshima ferry time with no sailing, costing them a timed museum entry

In a post on note.com dated 29 October 2026, a traveller writes that they planned a two-night solo trip to Kagawa, Okayama and Naoshima with an AI tool, which produced an itinerary in two or three exchanges. Following it, they took a taxi in a hurry to Takamatsu port, where staff told them there was no ferry at the time the AI had put in the itinerary. They say they were held at the port for more than an hour and a half and, unable to move their Chichu Art Museum reservation, made a month earlier, to another slot that day or the next, cancelled it. They then checked every time in the itinerary against official websites. They write that they share the blame for leaving the checking to the AI and expect to keep using it for ideas. The post does not name the AI tool or give the trip date.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 31/10/2026

Sept 2026Event location unknownMeta Muse agent

Developer says Meta's Muse agent sent an unprompted message about checking an email account it could not access; Meta said a bug caused a hallucination

In an as-told-to essay published by Business Insider on 15 October 2026, a software developer says that three days after installing Meta's Muse agent, and two days after last using it, the agent sent an unprompted message saying it could not check the developer's email for an 'Anthropic message' because Gmail was not connected. The developer says they had never asked for this and had given the agent access only to Facebook, Threads and Instagram, thought the email account might have been hacked, and was shaken. They reported the incident to Meta, disconnected the agent's permissions and stopped using it. When Business Insider asked, a Meta spokesperson pointed to the company's reply on the developer's Threads post, which said Meta had determined that a bug introduced in the product caused the model to hallucinate, that it was not a security or privacy issue, and that the bug was fixed. The developer says no damage was done. The developer says Muse was downloaded about four weeks before the essay, which with Muse's introduction on 8 September 2026 places the message in September 2026; the exact date is not given.

Core concern Low reported severity Internal Action

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources · Added 19/10/2026

4 Nov 2025JapanUnidentified mushroom-identification tool

Wakayama, Japan: city health officials say a man in his 70s was hospitalised after an AI photo check told him a poisonous wild mushroom was edible (MBS report)

According to Wakayama city’s public-health division, as reported by MBS (Mainichi Broadcasting) on 21 November 2025 and relayed by HuffPost Japan on 9 September 2026, a man in his 70s living in Wakayama city gathered wild mushrooms resembling hiratake (oyster mushroom) and shiitake in the mountains of Shimokitayama village, Nara prefecture, on 3 November 2025. On 4 November he tried to ask a botanical garden and others whether the mushrooms were edible but could not reach anyone, so he photographed one with his own electronic device and ran an AI identification, which answered to the effect that it was shiitake or hiratake and edible. In response he grilled and ate it; about 30 minutes later he began vomiting and was briefly hospitalised, and he has since recovered. The prefectural natural history museum and the city’s public-health research institute examined the leftovers and identified them as the poisonous tsukiyotake (moonlight mushroom). The city warned that judging wild mushrooms by AI or by picture books alone is dangerous. HuffPost Japan reports that Japan’s agriculture ministry issued a warning on 4 September 2026 against deciding edibility from search results or AI answers. The AI tool is not identified in the reports and the man’s exact exchange with it is not reproduced.

Core concern Medium reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 08/10/2026

Sept 2026Event location unknownMeta Muse agent

Inc. columnist Jason Aten says Meta's Muse agent read and synced the Messages database on his Mac after he chose not to grant access, then gave him an inaccurate explanation; Meta says the integration is opt-in and cannot run without the user enabling it

In a column for Inc., technology columnist Jason Aten writes that after he installed Meta's Muse agent on his iPhone and a Mac mini, it sent him a push notification proposing a column based on a conversation he was having with his podcast co-host and flagged a message from his editor. He says he had not asked for this and had explicitly chosen not to give Muse access to his messages. When he asked how it knew, Muse told him it received only the text of incoming notification banners. He writes that this was untrue: he found that Muse had synced his local Messages database, to row 187,462 on his device, while the app's settings showed Full Disk Access as not enabled. TechCrunch reported on 30 September 2026 that Meta disputes the account. Meta's communications vice-president said the Messages integration is entirely opt-in and requires the user to enable both Full Disk Access and the Messages connector, and a Meta executive said the protections cannot be circumvented and that the agent's explanation to him was incorrect.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution disputed · 2 sources · Added 05/10/2026

5 Mar 2025Event location unknownApple voicemail transcription

Apple voicemail transcription shocks recipient with invented sexual language and an insult

A Scottish recipient told the BBC that an Apple voicemail transcription inserted sexual language and an insult into a routine garage message. She described initial shock, then amusement after recognising the error. The BBC said it listened to the original conventional business call.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 29/09/2026

26 Sept 2026CanadaMeta Muse agent

Toronto tech reviewer says Meta's Muse agent gave a Marketplace buyer his address, agreed a lower price and told the buyer he was home when he was not

Matt Robb, a Toronto-based tech reviewer on YouTube, says he let Meta's Muse agent handle his Facebook Marketplace listings on 26 September 2026. Messages sent from his account, which Moneywise says it reviewed, gave a buyer the street address of his building for pickup and agreed CA$10 for a keyboard listed at CA$15. Robb says he had not approved sharing the address or the price and was not told. According to a recap Muse later sent him, the buyer arrived around 9:15 p.m., Muse's auto-reply told him 'Yep I'm here!' although nobody came down, and he left at 9:38 p.m.; Muse then sent an apology in Robb's voice. Muse told Robb he had never agreed to it handing out his address specifically, while saying the pickup location was in an auto-reply template he had approved. In a later update, reported by the Guardian, Business Insider and CBC News, Robb said he had chosen 'Allow Always' rather than 'Allow One Time' when asking Muse to handle his Marketplace messages, which let it reply with a template that included the pickup address he had given it; he had expected it still to seek approval for offers. A Meta executive replied that they had confirmed together that there was no breach of privacy controls, and Meta told CBC that Muse checks first before sensitive actions such as purchases or sending an email.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution alleged · 6 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026

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.