1 Mar 2023 to 22 Jun 2023Event location unknownChatGPT
In a passenger's personal-injury suit against the airline Avianca in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, an opposition brief filed on 1 March 2023 cited judicial opinions that did not exist. The court found that the lawyer who did the research had used ChatGPT, which fabricated the cases, and that when he asked the chatbot whether one of them was real it replied that it had supplied real authorities that could be found on legal databases. On 22 June 2023 the court found bad faith by the two lawyers, based on their conduct after the citations were questioned, and imposed a USD 5,000 penalty jointly on them and their firm, together with letters to the client and to each judge falsely named as an author of the fake opinions.
Core + contextual relations Medium reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 2 sources · Added 28/10/2026
Event date unknownUnited StatesUnidentified chatbot
An Alcorn State University history professor in Mississippi said in TikTok videos from 20 July 2026, reported by TechSpot, Fox News and SuperTalk Mississippi, that he had hidden an instruction in white text in a midterm discussion question telling an AI to place the word Madagascar in the answer in a way that makes no sense. According to his account, 32 of 35 students across two classes pasted the question into a chatbot and submitted its output, which mentioned Madagascar in nonsensical sentences, and those students failed that portion of the midterm. He said he let students contest the grade or resubmit their own response; two contested, and one student had her grade changed after saying she had read the hidden text in dark mode and thought it was part of the assignment. He later reported final grades that included one F. The account rests on the instructor's videos; no student or university statement is reported.
Core concern Low reported severity Internal Action
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 23/10/2026
15 Nov 2022 to 27 May 2023Event location unknownUnidentified video tool
On 26 September 2025 the Federal Court of Australia ordered a man to pay civil penalties of A$343,500 plus costs, in what the eSafety Commissioner said was the first proceeding to impose a civil penalty under the Online Safety Act 2021. On facts he admitted, he posted 12 non-consensual deepfake intimate images of six women ordinarily resident in Australia to a deepfake website between November 2022 and May 2023. He made each one by uploading a photo of the woman found online to a webpage that created semi-naked or naked images and saving the generated image. He refused eSafety's removal notice, so two images stayed online for almost a year, and he admitted posting some later images in retaliation against people involved in issuing the notice. Each woman complained to eSafety, and the court found the posts were likely to have caused them hurt and distress. The eSafety Commissioner called this kind of deepfake abuse a misuse of easily accessible AI tools.
Core concern High reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 5 sources · Added 23/10/2026
2026South KoreaUnidentified AI coding tool
In the first semester of 2026, 36 of the 62 students in a fourth-year computer engineering course on computer networking at Seoul National University were penalised for using AI on coding assignments, according to an SNU official and the course's professor as reported by JoongAng Ilbo and Yonhap on 30 July 2026. The syllabus said all course activities would be conducted without generative AI. The professor gave zero marks on the affected assignments to 25 students who came forward and a D-minus course grade to 11 who admitted AI use only when interviewed; he said all 36 admitted using AI. The department's student government objected that the criteria were unclear and that honest students were penalised while others may not have been; the professor rejected this. On 16 October 2026 a lawmaker raised SNU's AI cheating incidents at the National Assembly audit, and the university president said its AI guidelines needed to be supplemented.
Core concern Low reported severity Internal Action
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 5 sources, 4 underlying accounts · Added 21/10/2026
6 May 2026United StatesClaude Console (reported)
In the federal lawsuit over the Trump administration's mass layoffs (AFGE v. Trump, Northern District of California), a partner at Binnall Law Group filed an emergency motion on the night of 6 May 2026, in the Eastern District of Virginia, to quash a deposition subpoena directed at a former Homeland Security official the firm represents; that court transferred the motion to the Northern District of California. On 13 May Judge Susan Illston denied the motion. Her order says the court was troubled by multiple citations to case quotations that do not exist in the cases cited, that counsel was unaware of these quotations when questioned at the hearing and had no explanation for them, and it ordered counsel to explain the fabricated quotations in a declaration under penalty of perjury by 15 May. In that declaration the partner said he had used Claude Console, an enterprise AI platform, to create an initial draft, that an associate told him she had checked the citations, and that he did not double-check the quotations. He apologised to the court and opposing counsel and attached a corrected version. The firm's founding partner declared that firm policy prohibits using tools like Claude for legal drafting, that the error breached its policies and training, and that the firm had opened an internal investigation. On 20 Oct 2026 the court administratively closed the related miscellaneous case, saying the motion had been adjudicated and no further filings were anticipated. Neither order read mentions a sanction, and whether one was imposed is not established.
Core concern Low reported severity Internal Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 18/10/2026
1 Jul 2026Event location unknownIndie Campers chatbot (reported)
In a Reddit post on 4 July 2026 a renter wrote that on 1 July they booked a camper van from Indie Campers for a trip on 12 to 18 July and, before paying, asked the AI chatbot on the company's official website whether they could travel to Montenegro. According to the post, the bot explicitly guaranteed that it was allowed, and the renter paid in full. The renter wrote that an email to human support an hour later went unanswered for more than 48 hours, that support then said the terms strictly forbid travel to Montenegro, and that the company said it takes no responsibility for AI answers and processed the cancellation with its standard late-cancellation penalty, refunding 5% and keeping 95%. In a reply the renter wrote that 1,500 euros is not a small amount for them, said a card chargeback complaint had been sent to the bank with screenshots, and said they lived in Spain. A Dutch internet-law blog relayed the post on 9 July 2026; two of its commenters reported asking the chatbot themselves, one receiving an answer that travel in Europe including Montenegro was covered and another a list of allowed countries without Montenegro. No response from Indie Campers was found, and the outcome of the chargeback is unknown.
Core concern Medium reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources · Added 13/10/2026
1 Sept 2026Event location unknownUnidentified AI drafting tool
In a pending appeal against a decision of Austria's data protection authority, the Federal Administrative Court (BVwG) found that the appellant had filed hundreds of pages of statements and attachments within less than four months that were obviously created exclusively with large-language-model text programs and not labelled as AI-generated. In a decision of 1 September 2026 the court imposed a EUR 200 penalty for wanton use of the court, holding that the AI-assisted filings repeated the same complaints, brought no new facts or evidence and ignored the EU labelling duty for AI-generated content. The court announced it as the first such penalty for AI submissions. The appellant is anonymised and the appellant's response is not reported.
Core concern Low reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 13/10/2026
15 Dec 2025 to 1 Oct 2026CanadaUnidentified AI drafting tool
On 1 October 2026 the Quebec Court of Appeal ordered court costs against a self-represented appellant in a family-law contempt appeal as a sanction for appeal filings that, in the court's description, he had written with artificial intelligence and that contained two references to non-existent judgments and one inaccurate reference to a cited paragraph. The court held that AI may be used to draft appeal filings only if the litigant verifies the authorities, found that he had breached the Chief Justice's notice on AI use, and described his conduct as negligence rather than bad faith. It rejected the respondent's request for a separate $10,000 sanction and, for reasons unrelated to AI, reduced the contempt penalty imposed at first instance. The decision does not name the AI tool.
Core + contextual relations Low reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 12/10/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownUnidentified AI phone support system
In a public post to r/doordash_drivers created on 5 October 2026 (UTC), a DoorDash driver writes that one order of a two-order batch at a restaurant was ready and the other had not been started. They say they called support and an AI answered, offered either a ten-minute wait for a penalty-free unassignment or an immediate unassignment, and, when they agreed only on that condition, told them it would unassign them without affecting their completion rate. They write that after the unassignment their completion rate fell from 98 to 97, and describe it as the only statistic that can lead to deactivation. A commenter reports a similar assurance from the support line. The account is the poster's alone and uncorroborated; no response from DoorDash is reported.
Core concern Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 06/10/2026
Feb 2026Event location unknownUnidentified AI writing and image tools
In February 2026 Insider Gaming and the A.V. Club reported that Clickout Media, a marketing company that owns the gaming sites The Escapist, Videogamer and Esports Insider, had laid off editorial staff, and Insider Gaming said the layoffs came about a week after freelancer layoffs began. Insider Gaming said it understood the company was making a heavy pivot to AI content that resulted in almost all editorial staff being let go, with a skeleton crew of 'AI Editors'. Press Gazette reported on 27 February 2026 that up to 20 staff were believed to have been fired and that two Videogamer bylines had photographs that an image-checking service assessed as AI-generated, under a page statement crediting a team of gaming experts. Press Gazette also reported that in 2026 budgets were frozen and staff were told to reapply for roles training AI writers. A Videogamer editor told Aftermath they were offered an 'AI editor' role and refused, and the A.V. Club reported that editor posted that they and their team were laid off. An Escapist writer said their role was up for redundancy. A Videogamer review of Resident Evil Requiem under one flagged byline appeared on Metacritic and was removed. Former employees were reportedly required to sign NDAs to receive severance pay. Clickout Media had not responded to Insider Gaming or Press Gazette at publication, and Aftermath reported no response to its questions about AI-generated author images. In July 2026 the company told Press Gazette, about a separate complaint, that it uses AI-assisted content with human checks. The Esports Radar attributed Esports Insider's March 2026 redundancies to a Google manual penalty, and those are not counted here.
Core concern Medium reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 7 sources, 6 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026
Event date unknownUnited StatesUnidentified AI search answer
The Spokesman-Review reported on 24 October 2025 that an Idaho Fish and Game spokesperson said a waterfowl hunter in southeast Idaho was caught hunting a day early. According to the spokesperson, the hunter told wardens the opening date came from an online search, and wardens found the search returned an AI answer built from a failed proposal instead of the agency's final decision. As context, Idaho Fish and Game had published a warning on 15 October 2025 stating that conservation officers encounter people using AI and search engines and getting incorrect information, which has led to citations. Wyoming Game and Fish published a notice on 22 October 2025 that AI-generated search results were citing failed bills as current law. The sources do not state whether this hunter was cited, the penalty, the date of the event, or which AI product produced the answer.
Core concern Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026
Nov 2023VietnamUnidentified AI writing tool and Turnitin (reported)
In November 2023 a student at the Ho Chi Minh City University of Foreign Languages and Information Technology (HUFLIT) wrote on the university's anonymous confessions page that a writing-course essay had been returned with 50 percent of the marks deducted because the lecturer found it had been written with AI. The student said the lecturer had warned that AI-written essays would be treated as plagiarism if detected, had not expected detection, and learned from the lecturer that Vietnamese-to-English translation software could also be counted as AI use when checked with specialised plagiarism software; the student did not know whether the course could still be passed. The vice-rector told Tuoi Tre that the lecturer had told students before the assignment not to use AI applications, that the course tests independent writing, that using an AI support tool breached academic-integrity rules, and that the deduction was appropriate, while noting the university had no formal document on sanctions for AI use. A university representative told Thanh Nien and Dan Tri that the university does not ban AI but requires transparency about tools used, uses paid AI-detection services when necessary, and had not received a formal complaint from the student; a later report said the university had bought Turnitin licences for lecturers to check AI use in essays.
Core + contextual relations Low reported severity Internal Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 5 sources, 4 underlying accounts · Added 20/09/2026