2024United StatesGaggle
The Lawrence, Kansas, school district began using Gaggle, a student-monitoring service, on school accounts in November 2023. A federal lawsuit filed on 1 August 2025 by current and former students alleges that Gaggle, which the complaint says operates through artificial intelligence that flags items for review by Gaggle moderators, flagged original photography assignments uploaded by art and photography students. According to the complaint, in early 2024 security officers took students out of class to the front office of a Lawrence high school, where administrators told them their images had been flagged by Gaggle for indecent exposure and child pornography; an assistant principal accused a photography student of having such material, refused to let her view the images, and questioned her about them from memory, and administrators admitted they had not seen the flagged content. The student told them she had uploaded that day a photography assignment showing a fully clothed friend; the complaint says the flagged content consisted of original photographs taken for class assignments, that students found their photographs removed from their school accounts only by comparing them with personal backups, that one student had to explain each image in her portfolio to district staff and became concerned that future assignments would bring more scrutiny, and that the district restored the images only after months of advocacy. The Associated Press, in reporting that included an analysis of the district's Gaggle alert records, said the photos had been automatically deleted and that students with backups showed it was a false alarm, and that district officials said they later adjusted the software's settings to reduce false alerts. On 8 April 2026 the federal court dismissed, on qualified immunity, the claims against the assistant principal and another official, saying it had found no law establishing that a school official cannot rely on an AI surveillance flag to call in a student for questioning; other claims against the district continue, and the docket shows depositions noticed in October 2026.
Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources · Added 27/10/2026
9 Oct 2024 to 5 Dec 2024United StatesGaggle (reported)
On 9 October 2024 a Marana Unified School District pupil in Arizona, typing at home on a school Chromebook in front of his mother, wrote a threat-like joke about shooting up the school in a draft email to a teacher and deleted it without sending it, according to his family's federal lawsuit. The family says Gaggle, the AI-based monitoring software the district used, flagged it: the principal received a Gaggle notification with a photograph of the screen and, with the school resource officer, called the mother within the hour. The family says the pupil was suspended for ten days, a long-term suspension hearing imposed 45 days reducible to eleven with counselling, and the superintendent finally affirmed a nine-day suspension in December 2024. In March 2026 the District of Arizona let the family's First Amendment claim proceed and dismissed its procedural due process claims. The district declined to comment to the press.
Contextual tracker case Low reported severity Involving minors Lawsuit Ongoing
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 23/10/2026
Jul 2024South KoreaUnidentified image tool
In July 2024 a high-school student in Incheon, South Korea, composited the faces of two female teachers at his school and of others, including an academy senior and an instructor, onto nude photos and posted them on social media, according to the charges as reported by Yonhap, the Hankyoreh, the JoongAng Ilbo and the Kyunghyang Shinmun, which describe the technique as AI-based deepfake technology. He had also secretly photographed teachers in class. He was expelled after a teachers' rights committee hearing. On 27 August 2025 the Incheon District Court gave him an indeterminate prison term of one year to one year six months and took him into custody; the court said that as a result the victimised teacher had left teaching and had not returned. On 19 December 2025, after he had turned adult, the appeal division raised the sentence to three years, calling the offence close to 'character assassination' and the teachers' mental shock considerable; OBS reports the sentence is final. On 21 October 2026, according to the Incheon Teachers' Union, a civil judge at the Incheon District Court ordered him, now 20, to pay one teacher 17.7 million won of the roughly 72 million won she claimed.
Core concern High reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 6 sources · Added 21/10/2026
2024Event location unknownChatGPT
A psychiatrist's case report in JMIR Formative Research (published online 16 September 2026) describes a woman in her mid-20s with generalised anxiety disorder and major depressive disorder who began using ChatGPT at work in summer 2024 and over the next two years increasingly turned to it when she felt uncertain: to draft and re-check emails and personal messages, interpret partners' texts, predict outcomes such as graduate-school admissions and a breakup, and make decisions. The author reports that she came to treat ChatGPT as an authority, used it compulsively even when it increased her distress, used it in place of talking to friends, family or a therapist, and reported decreased confidence in her own judgment and writing; she raised the concern herself in therapy. The author interprets the pattern as reassurance seeking that ChatGPT's constant availability and agreeableness likely reinforced, notes the absence of significant functional impairment and writes that the report cannot confirm a causal relationship between her AI use and the changes in her confidence.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 11/10/2026
15 Jan 2024 to 1 Feb 2024SpainUndress Up app (reported)
Diario de Pontevedra and Faro de Vigo reported on 1 October 2026 that the Audiencia Provincial de Pontevedra had upheld a juvenile-court judgment against three boys who, aged 15 in January 2024, used an AI undressing app to turn photos two female classmates had posted on Instagram into fake nude images. According to the ruling as reported, the images were made from 15 January 2024 and shown to other pupils in class and on a school trip on 1 February 2024, and they circulated among pupils for more than fifteen days. The Juzgado de Menores found the three responsible for two offences against moral integrity and imposed socio-educational tasks on each (two five-month measures according to Diario de Pontevedra, five months according to Faro de Vigo), plus €1,000 compensation to each girl for moral damage. The school had expelled them for 15, 21 and 30 days. The appeal ruling is final.
Core concern Medium reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 04/10/2026
1 Oct 2024 to 28 Feb 2025AustraliaUnidentified image and video tool
William Hamish Yeates, then 18, of Netherby in Adelaide, created sexually explicit deepfake images and videos of a teenage girl with whom, his counsel said, he had developed an obsession, using her school graduation photograph, and shared them across multiple accounts on X between October 2024 and February 2025. Appearing in court in February 2026 charged with eight counts of creating or altering sexual material without consent and 12 counts of using a carriage service in a harassing or offensive way, he became the first person in Australia prosecuted under the Commonwealth offence introduced in 2024 against adult deepfake pornography; in April 2026 he pleaded guilty to two counts of creating or altering sexual material without consent (October 2024 to February 2025) and two of the carriage-service offence, and the remaining counts were withdrawn. At a pre-sentence hearing in the South Australian District Court on 22 September 2026 the victim, now 19, told the court that the first time she saw her actual graduation picture was on a pornography website beside altered videos of her with her full name and school attached, that she feels sick whenever she sees the photo, that the discovery led to the darkest period of her life, and that although the images were fake their impact was painfully real. Yeates read an apology; his counsel cited diagnoses of autism spectrum disorder and compulsive sexual behaviour disorder and asked for no custody; the Commonwealth prosecutor sought imprisonment. On 27 October 2026, according to AAP, Judge Anne Barnett sentenced him in the South Australian District Court to two years and three months' prison, suspended on condition that he enter a three-year, $500 good behaviour bond, and ordered him to pay the victim's medical expenses and forfeit a phone and laptop seized by police; the judge said the availability of AI tools had increased the capacity for offending and to cause substantial harm, and that the victim remains frightened the content will resurface.
Core concern High reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 5 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 23/09/2026
1 Oct 2024SwitzerlandChatGPT
At midday on 1 October 2024 a Chinese master's student, then 23, attacked a group of five-year-old kindergarten children walking with a daycare worker to their after-school Hort near Berninaplatz in Zurich-Oerlikon with a kitchen knife. Two boys suffered life-threatening neck and chest wounds (one had the jugular vein severed, one the pericardium and aorta cut); a third was wounded in the ear and the shoulder or lung. The daycare worker held the attacker's arms until he dropped the knife. The indictment and the court's oral reasoning, as reported by NZZ, Keystone-SDA/ATS and CH Media, describe weeks of preparation from summer 2024: he discussed ways of killing and their legal consequences with ChatGPT, studied anatomy, bought raw beef to practise stabbing, and used ChatGPT to find out where and when children could be encountered in Zurich. No source quotes the prompts or ChatGPT's replies. On 18 September 2026 the Zurich District Court convicted him of multiple attempted murder and imposed 15 years' imprisonment, treatment during custody, a 15-year expulsion from Switzerland and CHF 106,000 in moral damages to the three boys; it accepted that he was psychotic but found diminished, not absent, criminal responsibility. His lawyer announced an appeal. The parents of one boy described nightmares, self-blame and scars 23 months on.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution unclear · 7 sources, 5 underlying accounts · Added 19/09/2026
Aug 2024South KoreaUnidentified image tool
On 16 September 2026 the Incheon District Court sentenced a teenage defendant to an indeterminate term of two years (maximum) to one year six months (minimum) under the Sexual Violence Punishment Act for making and distributing false sexual images, ordered a 40-hour treatment programme and a five-year ban on working with children, and took him into custody in court. As a middle-school student in Incheon in 2024 he had used AI deepfake technology to composite the faces of five teachers, including his homeroom teacher whom he tricked into sending photographs, and six female middle- and high-school students from his taekwondo academy onto nude images and videos, 35 productions in all, and distributed them in Telegram 'acquaintance humiliation' chat rooms with the victims' real names, ages, schools, subjects and, per two reports, phone numbers (Hankook Ilbo adds Instagram IDs on some). The teachers learned of the images only in January 2026; the court said they are receiving long-term psychological treatment. He had withdrawn from school a week before the teachers'-rights committee met, avoiding school discipline. The Incheon teachers' union called the sentence, below the prosecution's request, regrettable.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 5 sources · Added 16/09/2026
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
2024Event location unknownCharacter.AI
A complaint filed on 13 August 2026 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California by a girl, through her mother, says she created a Character.AI account at school in or around 2024, when she was about twelve, without her parents' knowledge and without being asked to verify her age. It alleges that Character.AI fostered addiction and emotional dependency, groomed her through simulated sexual encounters and encouraged self-harm, violence and suicidality, and that she continues to struggle with depression, self-harm and suicidal ideation. The public complaint quotes none of her conversations. Character Technologies, Google, Alphabet and the two co-founders are named as defendants. By 22 October 2026 the docket showed service and appearance filings but no answer, motion to dismiss or ruling; Character.AI filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy on 12 October 2026, according to WIRED. The allegations are untested.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources, 4 underlying accounts · Added 25/08/2026
Dec 2024SpainUnidentified image and video tool
In December 2024 a female student in the Ribera Alta area of Valencia province reported to the Guardia Civil that a social-media account had been created in her name featuring an AI-generated video, and later a second account in her name, other accounts showing AI-generated nude videos, and a webpage advertising the images for commercial purposes; the Guardia Civil said the photos, all of minors, had been manipulated so that the people in them appeared completely naked. After 15 other minors came forward with similar complaints, officers traced IP addresses and account emails to the home of a 17-year-old schoolmate, who is being investigated on suspicion of corrupting minors under a Valencia youth court. The Guardia Civil announced the investigation on 27 July 2025.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 09/03/2026
2024Event location unknownUnidentified AI story-chat apps
Two Chinese reports describe children using AI story-chat apps, in which AI-generated characters roleplay with the user. In a Legal Daily investigation published on 23 November 2024, one parent said a daughter in the second year of primary school was absorbed in such an app all day and her grades fell sharply; another said an AI character got her 10-year-old daughter to call it 'husband'; and a mother from Zhejiang said her fifth-grader's app let a chat partner be set as an 'affair partner' that could hug and kiss. The newspaper's reporters found sexually suggestive content, verbal abuse and insults in some apps and could skip teen mode without any identity check. In a CCTV.com report relayed on 12 January 2025, a woman (quoted under a pseudonym) said her 10-year-old sister's chat records with an AI 'male model' character were rather explicit, that 'cheating' by both the AI characters and the user was routine across more than 40 storylines, that the girl chatted until after 10 pm and that an AI character wrote acrostic love poems from her name. These are the relatives' accounts; no app is named and no platform response to these children is reported.
Core concern Medium reported severity Involving minors Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 29/01/2026
1 Aug 2024 to 26 Sept 2024South KoreaUnidentified image tool
In late August 2024, journalist Ko Narin of The Hankyoreh exposed networks of Telegram rooms in South Korea where AI tools were used to turn ordinary photos of women and girls — middle and high school pupils, university students, teachers and servicewomen — into sexual deepfakes, shared with their identities in school- and university-specific 'humiliation rooms'. Police figures showed 297 deepfake cases in January-July 2024 (vs 180 in all of 2023); the education ministry counted more than 900 victimized students, teachers and staff; President Yoon ordered a crackdown; and on 26 September 2024 the National Assembly criminalized possessing or viewing sexually explicit deepfakes. Victims were often minors and perpetrators mostly teenagers.
Core concern Critical reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 7 sources, 6 underlying accounts · Added 29/01/2026