May 2025United StatesUnidentified facial recognition system
The Florida Trib (28 September 2026, republished by the Florida Phoenix) reports that in May 2025, during the multi-agency sting Operation Rescue Our Children, a man using the Skout dating app sent an undercover officer posing as a 13-year-old girl two photos of someone else: a former friend, a supermarket assistant manager and father of two whom the Trib calls 'Nick'. Investigators told him they relied on facial-recognition tools to identify him in the pictures, he recalled, and the Trib found no indication in court documents of other investigative work before his arrest. He was handcuffed at work, charged with soliciting a child via computer and unlawful use of a two-way communications device, spent a night in jail, wore an ankle monitor, was barred from contact with his two young children for a month and a half and could not live at home for nearly three months. The account's owner, a man with a prior conviction for the same offence, admitted on 31 July 2025 using the photos; charges against the father were dropped the next day and a judge ordered the case expunged on 4 August 2025, though the records stayed publicly online for more than a year. The family says the ordeal cost $45,000 in lost wages and legal fees and traumatised the children. The sheriff's office did not respond to the Trib's questions.
Contextual tracker case High reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 29/09/2026
Sept 2023United StatesFlock Safety license plate readers
On 23 September 2026 the Marion County Prosecutor's Office charged four suspended Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department (IMPD) officers and one former officer with fraud and official misconduct after internal audits in August and September 2026 found misuse of the department's Flock Safety automated license-plate-reader (ALPR) system; one officer was also charged with two counts of stalking. According to prosecutors, the probable cause affidavit and court documents as reported by WISH-TV, that officer made 1,396 searches with no apparent law-enforcement purpose, began searching the plate of a woman he met at a workout class in September 2023 nine days after meeting her and messaged her from a Facebook account under a false name, also tracked his ex-wife and a woman he met at her workplace (telling her he was an FBI agent), and in total conducted unauthorised surveillance of 11 people, seven women and four men. Another officer made 1,616 searches between April 2024 and April 2025 for two plates, one his ex-wife's, using another officer's credentials. The chief placed the officers on desk duty, revoked their ALPR access, suspended four and recommended their dismissal; one resigned. The department said the misuse came to light after an officer self-reported and an audit followed; the prosecutor said each count corresponds to one license plate. IMPD, which leases about 301 Flock cameras and can search a shared national network, has since required every user to sign its ALPR policy, tied each search to a case number, adopted single logins and increased audits, and said it will not reduce its cameras.
Contextual tracker case High reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 5 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 25/09/2026
19 Jun 2026 to 13 Aug 2026BrazilChatGPT and OpenAI moderation
Over about two months in 2026 a 36-year-old farmer in rural São Gabriel da Palha, Espírito Santo, exchanged messages with ChatGPT that the Espírito Santo civil police describe as plans to kill his eight-year-old son, attack other people and kill himself; one message said he had offered 50,000 to someone to kill him and his son. OpenAI reported the messages to the FBI, which passed them through Brazil's Ministry of Justice cyber-operations laboratory to the state police on 16 June; the man was arrested on 19 June as he left home, a day before the date on which police believed the plan would be carried out. Police say what the platform provided was corroborated at the scene (four bottles of unidentified substances and a knotted rope were found) but that he denied intending to kill the child; his lawyer says he was talking nonsense to a chatbot and took no concrete step. After 54 days in custody a court granted habeas corpus on 13 August 2026 because the inquiry had not been concluded and no charges had been brought, imposing electronic monitoring and a ban on approaching or contacting his son and the child's mother. Police were still examining his phone and awaiting forensic results. OpenAI provided user details and his messages but not ChatGPT's replies and did not answer the BBC's question why; it told the BBC it may notify law enforcement when it detects a credible and imminent risk of harm to others. The case is recorded as an institutional response to AI use: the reported adverse consequence is the detention without charge, and the police account that the report prevented a planned killing is preserved as context.
Core + contextual relations High reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 23/09/2026
Aug 2017United StatesDraftKings and FanDuel apps
Christopher Evans (Philadelphia; complaint filed 24 July 2026 in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas) and Michael Santos (Coatesville, Chester County; complaint filed 29 July 2026 in the Chester County Court of Common Pleas) sued DraftKings and its Pennsylvania affiliate; Santos also sued FanDuel and its parents. Both product-liability complaints, filed by the same law firm, allege that the defendants' sports-betting, daily-fantasy and casino apps are designed to addict, and that the companies 'utilize the combination of advanced technology and artificial intelligence paired with the tracking of personalized user data to intentionally addict users', operating 'AI-powered engagement platforms' (pleaded on information and belief) and, per DraftKings' 10-K as quoted, 'data science and machine learning' recommendation engines. Evans pleads that since about August 2017 he wagered over US$2.1 million with net losses of about US$81,000, received constant targeted promotions and personalised push notifications and a VIP account manager, developed depression and anxiety and was formally diagnosed with depression in 2020, stopped going outside, fell into debt, had his vehicle repossessed and separated from his wife. Santos pleads over US$1.164 million wagered on DraftKings with net losses of about US$58,000 plus small FanDuel losses, targeted advertising and a VIP manager who kept offering bonus bets after he said he wanted to stop, maxed-out credit cards, the forced sale of his house, diagnoses of depression and anxiety, suicidal ideation, and self-exclusion with the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board in 2023. Both cases were removed to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on 16 September 2026 (2:26-cv-07168 and 2:26-cv-07176). The allegations are untested.
Contextual tracker case High reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources · Added 20/09/2026
2 Sept 2026United StatesMeta AI
On 1 September 2026 Kalie Robins, a Utah travel creator, posted a short Instagram video of herself singing in the car with one of her daughters; it was also shown on Facebook. The next day she noticed Meta AI had placed suggested questions under the post, starting with 'Who's the child passenger?'. Clicking the prompts, she said, produced her two daughters' names, birth information, photos and videos drawn from her own and relatives' past posts, including a newborn photo from her mother's account and a picture she believed she had deleted years earlier, and a further prompt, 'Where does Kalie Robins live?', assembled older and newer posts into her likely location. Her 2 September reaction video drew more than 310,000 likes. Meta told reporters the prompts 'missed the mark', 'should never have been generated' and had been fixed, while saying the feature only surfaces information the user can already access; it disputed that a long-deleted photo was used, saying the photo had been deleted shortly before the video and remained briefly visible through a bug. Robins said Meta never contacted her and that the episode left her feeling she had 'failed' her children.
Contextual tracker case Low reported severity Involving minors Internal Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources · Added 18/09/2026
Event date unknownUnited StatesFlock Safety license plate readers
San Jose's police chief announced on 11 September 2026 that an officer had been fired after accessing the department's Flock Safety automated license-plate-reader data on his personal phone and giving a vehicle's location to his cousin, a suspect in a domestic-violence case, who used it to locate the woman accusing him. The chief called it 'a betrayal of the public trust', said the officer was placed on leave, criminally investigated and referred to the district attorney, and that the case was submitted to California's peace-officer standards commission for decertification; neither the officer nor the cousin has been charged. The department has since barred access to the system from personal devices and is testing auditing tools. Neither the victim nor the officer is named in the inspected reports.
Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Internal Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources · Added 16/09/2026