Feb 2021United StatesGoogle CSAM image classifier
In February 2021 a San Francisco father took photos of his toddler son's medical condition after a nurse asked for photos before a video consultation; the doctor used them to diagnose the problem and prescribe antibiotics. The New York Times reported in August 2022 that when the photos were backed up from his Android phone to Google's servers, Google's artificial-intelligence tool for recognising never-before-seen child abuse images flagged them. Two days after the photos were taken his Google account was disabled for 'harmful content', which cost him more than a decade of email, contacts and photos and, through Google Fi, his phone number. Google reported him to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and the San Francisco police obtained search warrants for his account; the investigator concluded that no crime had occurred. Google refused to reinstate the account after two appeals, the second with the police report, and later notified him that it was being permanently deleted. The Times reported a second father in Houston whose photos of his toddler, taken at a paediatrician's request, were also flagged; his Gmail account was disabled in the middle of buying a house, Houston police questioned and cleared him, and he did not get the account back. Google said it stood by its decisions and that its reviewers had found a further video in the San Francisco father's account that it considered problematic.
Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 02/11/2026
13 Oct 2025 to 26 Nov 2025BrazilUnidentified video tool
The Federal District Civil Police (PCDF) in Brazil say a criminal group ran fake online donation campaigns that used images of elderly people, children and seriously ill people, and used artificial intelligence tools, including deepfakes, to make fake videos with the images of the singer Gusttavo Lima and the Catholic priests Marcelo Rossi and Fábio de Melo. The posts circulated on social media and sent people to pages imitating legitimate charity appeals; the money went to bank accounts the group controlled. Police say one company linked to the group received 215,575 transactions totalling about R$9.8 million between 13 October and 26 November 2025, mostly of R$30 and R$50, and that the number of transactions does not necessarily match the number of victims. On 28 October 2026 the PCDF launched Operação Cáritas with six preventive arrest warrants and search warrants in the Federal District and four states; five suspects had been arrested by the time of most reports (g1 reported six). How the police established that the videos were AI-made is not disclosed, and no response from the people depicted is reported.
Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/10/2026
14 Oct 2026BrazilUnidentified image tool
A 12-year-old girl in Vitória da Conquista, in the south-west of Bahia, Brazil, was threatened from 14 October 2026 by a 15-year-old who said he had intimate images of her and demanded money not to post them on social media. Frightened, she secretly took R$8,300 from money her father kept and handed it over; the suspect then demanded a further R$10,000. According to the Bahia Civil Police, its investigation found that the image used in the threats had been produced with artificial intelligence to simulate intimate content of the girl. On 23 October police identified the 15-year-old and three other adolescents aged 14 to 16 as suspects, recovered R$6,300 and an electric bicycle bought with part of the money, and returned the money to her father. The police opened a juvenile offence procedure and sent it to the Childhood and Youth Court. How police established that the image was AI-made is not disclosed.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 28/10/2026
Sept 2026 to Oct 2026VietnamChatGPT (reported)
Tuoi Tre reported on 18 October 2026 that buyers in Vietnam who ordered boxes of khau nhuc (braised pork belly), sold online as a specialty of That Khe in Lang Son province, found pork-trotter bones and pig skin. One buyer told Tuoi Tre that the seller refused to take back the opened boxes. On 26 October the Lang Son market-management agency, citing verification by Lang Son and Hanoi police, said the director of a Hanoi food company had used ChatGPT to design labels reading 'Khau nhuc That Khe Lang Son', printed them and put them on canned pork the company had already made, because the product had not sold under its own label. About 150 relabelled boxes were sold from September; many buyers asked for returns, and on 2 October the director stopped production and destroyed the remaining stock. Hanoi police opened a case file. The director is not named here.
Core concern Low reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 27/10/2026
Event date unknownIsraelUnidentified image tool
Israel Police said in February 2025 that three boys aged 13 to 15 from Jerusalem were suspected of taking photos of girls from social media, editing them with artificial intelligence software into nude images and distributing them without consent. According to Ynet, at least 30 girls were harmed; police said investigators identified dozens of victims and that a search of the suspects' homes found edited nude images of several girls. The head of the Jerusalem district youth investigations unit described dozens of cases of girls' privacy being violated through nude images edited with AI technology. The three were questioned over publishing a sexual image without consent, and the case was passed to prosecutors to decide on charges.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 22/10/2026
Aug 2026MalaysiaUnidentified image tool
Negeri Sembilan police said on 17 October 2026, in a statement reported by Bernama and RTM, that they had received five reports, lodged by parents or guardians between 20 and 23 August 2026, over the circulation of photographs of female students at a secondary school in Seremban that were edited using AI to resemble pornographic images. The police describe the victims as aged 14 to 17 and the suspect as an upper-secondary student whom the school suspended for five days in August; the case is being investigated under child sexual offences law and the Penal Code. A lawyer for a group of parents told a press conference that the images came to light on 12 August, when a younger pupil found them on an unlocked phone at school, alleged that the student made about 200 such images, and said the school had acknowledged more than 300 affected girls at a September meeting; he said there is no direct evidence that the images were sold. A mother said her child still has trouble sleeping every night. After the girls were questioned at the police headquarters on 17 October, their lawyers alleged that police had made them face the suspect during identification. The AI tool is not identified.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 7 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 18/10/2026
Event date unknownFinlandUnidentified image tool
Southeast Finland Police (Kaakkois-Suomen poliisi) opened a preliminary investigation in August 2026 into a case in which a minor boy in Lappeenranta is suspected of using AI to create nude images of several underage girls; Ilta-Sanomat reported that he is suspected of using social media photos of girls he knew, while the investigator told the paper that police could not yet comment on the method. On 25 August the lead investigator told Yle there were tens of victims, possibly more than a hundred, all from the Lappeenranta area; on 28 August police said the number of complainants had proved significantly smaller than first estimated, without giving a figure. Police are investigating the case as aggravated distribution of an image depicting a child sexually, an offence that also covers making such images, and said they were not aware that the AI images had been spread or sold onward. Student welfare professionals offered conversation and crisis support to young people in the town. Police also said the suspect had been threatened and harassed and that someone had tried to break into the suspect's home. The AI tool is not identified; victims and suspect are not named. Yle reported on 27 October 2026 that police had identified 45 victims with certainty, up from 37 about a month earlier; the detective inspector estimated that the final number could rise to fifty and said police aimed to complete the preliminary investigation by the end of the year.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 6 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 02/10/2026
Event date unknownFinlandUnidentified image tool
Yle reported in May 2026 that a man in a small Finnish town is suspected of using AI to turn photos of women he knew, including friends, colleagues and relatives, into topless or fully nude images and posting them, among several hundred images of the women that included original clothed photos, on two pornography sites. The women did not know about the images until Yle contacted them. Police opened a preliminary investigation for unauthorised distribution of a sexual image and defamation. By 1 October 2026 the head of the investigation confirmed 23 criminal complaints, but no victim had yet been interviewed. Yle counts more than 50 victims, not all identified. The suspect was dismissed from his job and earlier denied to Yle by email that he knew about the matter.
Core concern High reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 02/10/2026
15 Sept 2026 to 16 Sept 2026IndonesiaUnidentified image tool
On 23 September 2026 the spokesperson of the East Jakarta metropolitan police (Polres Metro Jakarta Timur) confirmed to reporters that a grade-9 student at a state junior high school in Pulogadung, East Jakarta, had edited photographs of several female schoolmates using artificial intelligence so that they appeared indecent, and that the edited images had been made into WhatsApp stickers; the police women-and-children protection unit is investigating. The case surfaced through a post on Threads which said about 200 edited photographs had been produced and sold to others; Kompas.com noted on 24 September that the sale allegation still rested only on that post, VIVA reported that police were still checking the claim that the images had been sold, and ANTARA reported on 23 September that police were still establishing the editing method, the recipients and the number of depicted students. As of 24 September the depicted students had not filed a report (detik and VIVA date the spokesperson's telephone remarks 'Kamis (22/9/2026)', a date that is internally inconsistent) and police appealed to them to do so. According to the parents' account relayed by police, on 15 and 16 September several people took the student who made the images to an empty house and then to a reservoir in Kayu Putih, punched him on the nose, ears and head, kicked his chest and stomach and threatened him with a bladed weapon; police attribute the beating to friends of the depicted students (ANTARA, detik, VIVA), while Kompas.com's 23 September report quotes the same spokesperson as saying the depicted students themselves beat him; he filed an assault report, which police are handling alongside the image case, and the school has held mediation with the students' parents. No student or school is named in the reports.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 8 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 25/09/2026
2025IndonesiaUnidentified image and video tool
Bogor Regency police confirmed on 18 September 2026 that they are investigating a report that pupils of a private school in Cileungsi had their faces edited with artificial intelligence into pornographic content. The head of the women-and-children unit told Kumparan that so far three pupils had reported in a single police report, that the case began when a victim heard from a friend that someone was making content with their face using AI technology, and that investigators were still establishing who made the content and which program was used, under the Electronic Information and Transactions Law. A lawyer for the witnesses, quoted by Pojok Bogor and Uzone, says the victims number in the hundreds; that two former pupils, one as initiator and one as maker, have been reported and admitted the acts to witnesses; that police found thousands of suspected AI-manipulated photos and videos on a suspect's phone, some uploaded to websites including an online-gambling site; and that the case, reported on 19 May 2026, is believed to have run since 2025 while all involved were still pupils, some victims now being university students. Police say the case is at an early stage and asked the public not to draw conclusions.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources · Added 19/09/2026
Event date unknownBrazilUnidentified video tool
São Paulo police are investigating a social-media creator over sexualised videos he made from photographs of young women and girls in a church congregation, which he said he animated with AI. Two teenage girls filed police reports, and one described embarrassment and fear about the exposure. The creator, through his lawyer, says the posts were humour and denies criminal intent; no charge has been reported.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Investigation Opened
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 5 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 14/06/2026