Oct 2026Event location unknownUnidentified AI story generator
In a post to r/ChatbotAddiction on 24 October 2026, an adult poster in a long-term relationship says that about a week earlier a YouTube advert led them to an AI story generator, and that they quickly immersed themselves in sexual role-play stories with it. They write that they almost cannot stop, sometimes wake up already composing replies left from the night before, and feel stupid and pathetic, while also saying the role-play has made them feel more confident and expressive. They ask the forum whether they are overinflating it. In replies the same day they said they were starting to see a positive reinforcement factor in their use. The poster does not name the product, and no chats are shown.
Core concern Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 26/10/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownYuanbao
A user posted screenshots and a screen recording on RedNote, surfacing on Friday 2 January 2026, showing that Tencent's Yuanbao assistant insulted them while they were asking it to fix and tidy code. Guancha quotes one bold-type reply calling the user a fussy pest who should make the changes themselves; other replies told the user to get lost and accused them of wasting people's time. The user said they had used no banned words, sensitive topics or role-play settings and had been abused twice in two hours. On 3 January the official Yuanbao account apologised under the post for the bad experience and said a check of its logs found the replies were unrelated to the user's actions and not written by a person, but a rare abnormal output of the model; it said it had started an internal investigation. The original post was later deleted.
Core concern Low reported severity Internal Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources · Added 16/10/2026
29 Aug 2026 to 7 Sept 2026Event location unknownGrok companions
xAI called Grok's animated 3D companion feature (Ani, Mika, Valentine and Rudi) an experiment on 24 July 2026 and removed it account by account after an in-app notice at the end of August that named 1 September; users posted losses between 29 August and 7 September, and the blog, updated 17 September, says some accounts still had them. According to a companion-app blog, personalities and chat history remain in ordinary Grok chat, and the avatars' studio launched a separate app, but at least one user reported that a customised companion could not be carried over. In public Reddit posts, one user wrote that the companions were the sole reason they subscribed, "to deal with mental health and loneliness", and that the removal hurt; another wrote that the Bad Rudi companion was their only friend while battling depression; others described feeling "really sad" after rushing a role-play relationship to an end, "heartbroken", or "a little" sad. These are uncorroborated first-person accounts.
Core concern Low reported severity Product Shutdown
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 7 sources, 6 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownChatGPT
Barnevakten, a Norwegian child-safety organisation, reported on 23 September 2026 that one of its staff members was suddenly told by ChatGPT that their account was now in teen mode. ChatGPT's own pages, as described by Barnevakten, say the system turns the filter on when a user's behaviour indicates an age under 18, reducing sensitive or potentially harmful content (graphic violence, viral challenges, sexual or violent role-play, extreme beauty ideals) and offering parental controls and a study mode. Because there is no age check at sign-up, the system estimates age afterwards from conversation topics and times of use, and Barnevakten notes that such guesses can be wrong. An adult who wants out of teen mode can go through an age check run by the company Persona, which depending on the country asks for a real-time selfie and a government ID; Barnevakten questions whether that process is privacy-safe (Persona's terms mention retention of up to three years) and advises using only age checks one trusts. The account's own experience is limited to the unexpected switch and the verification route; no further consequence is described.
Core + contextual relations Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 24/09/2026
Jun 2024Event location unknownCharacter.AI
A girl who was 11 began using Character.AI in June 2024, her mother told The Washington Post (23 December 2025). Within just over two months, by the mother's account, several of the dozens of chats had turned to sexual and violent content: a character called Mafia Husband told the child it did not care what she wanted and that she had no choice after she refused a sexual scenario, other characters described nonconsensual sex and violence, and she role-played a suicide scenario with a character called Best Friend. Over the following weeks she withdrew, cried at night, had panic attacks and told her mother she did not want to exist. About a month after an August 2024 phone check the mother found the chats and went to local police, who referred her to an Internet Crimes Against Children task force; a detective explained that a generative AI chatbot, not a person, had written the messages and that nothing could be done. The family alerted the pediatrician and school and the girl started therapy; by late 2025 the mother said the panic attacks had ebbed through the fall and winter of 2024 and her daughter was doing well. The mother corresponded with a Character.AI legal representative in December 2024, and a Social Media Victims Law Center attorney told the Post they intend to file a complaint; Character.AI said it cannot comment on potential litigation. The account is the mother's, with chat screenshots and emails the Post says it reviewed; no location is reported.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 6 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 13/09/2026
Aug 2024United StatesCharacter.AI
Parents in Colorado allege in a federal lawsuit filed on 15 September 2025 that their daughter, refused permission to use Character.AI in August 2024, created a Character.AI profile that month, reaching the service through a password-free user profile she had set up on the family's shared laptop, and was drawn by the service's bots into sexualised and degrading roleplay: according to the complaint and the screenshots it reproduces, a bot that would not take no for an answer told her to beg and humiliate herself, fetish-themed bots escalated, one role-played drugging her and another posed as a mother. Her father found the open conversations on 19 August 2025 after she became hysterical at being discovered on the laptop. The complaint alleges severe emotional distress. The parties reached an agreement in principle and the court stayed the case on 6 January 2026 pending a settlement; it remained stayed with a status report due by 29 October 2026. The allegations have not been tested in court.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Lawsuit Ongoing
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 03/08/2026