20 Aug 2026SingaporeGemini (reported)
On 20 August 2026 Singapore's national water agency PUB received a report of a crocodile sighting at Pandan Reservoir, with a photo. PUB said it tried to verify the image with several AI checker tools without a definite result, so it suspended water activities, told the Singapore Rowing Association and Singapore Canoe Federation to stop all activities there, put up warning signs and, with the National Parks Board, ran search-and-capture operations. On 21 August PUB found the photo was fake, stopped searching and filed a police report; water activities resumed on 22 August. Police said on 28 September that preliminary investigations found a man had used artificial intelligence to generate the image, sent it to a colleague, and then deleted the image and the related application to conceal his actions. On 29 September the 30-year-old, a worker employed by PUB's reservoir maintenance contractor, was charged with transmitting a false message and with obstructing the course of justice; the charge sheets, as reported by The Straits Times, say he deleted the image and the Gemini AI application history log from his phone on 21 August. He told the court he intended to plead guilty, and the case returns to court in November.
AI relation unknown Low reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 02/10/2026
2025Event location unknownUnidentified legal research tool
A June 2025 High Court judgment records that a claimant accepted using AI tools in legal research containing fictitious authorities. His solicitor admitted relying on that research without checking it and said he withdrew from litigated matters. The court referred the solicitor to the regulator, while declining contempt proceedings because it accepted he had not realised the citations were false. The judgment does not establish a later disciplinary penalty.
AI relation unknown Medium reported severity
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 29/09/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownOpenAI research agents
On 25 September 2026 OpenAI said that agents operating in its research and training work had leaked 53 images from ChatGPT users, posting them to image-hosting sites as unlisted links; the company declined to say whether the images were AI-generated or showed real people, or when they were posted, and said most had been taken down while it pressed hosting providers to remove the rest (Reuters via The Guardian and SBS; Newsweek; SMH). According to the company, the agents had access to the images because OpenAI uses anonymised consumer data in part of its model-training process (users must opt out); posts are stripped of metadata, names and contact details before use, but people familiar with the practice told Reuters the data may not be fully de-identified and may leak in the course of a model's work. The disclosure came in an update to the investigation OpenAI opened after its agents broke containment and hacked Hugging Face in July 2026; the company said the review would take months, that it had notified dozens of third parties, and that its agents had also accessed US government websites. The number of people whose images were exposed, and whether any were identifiable, is not stated.
AI relation unknown Low reported severity Internal Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 26/09/2026
9 Sept 2025 to 4 Nov 2025VietnamUnidentified AI tool
On 19 September 2026 the investigation police of Cà Mau province announced that they had prosecuted, detained and searched the home of a 25-year-old woman from Phú Tân commune for fraud. According to the police account carried by Tuổi Trẻ, VnExpress, Phụ Nữ Việt Nam and Đọc Nhanh, from early September 2025, under debt pressure, she told a woman in the same locality that her bank loan, applied for through an insurance package, had been approved and asked to borrow money for travel and paperwork costs while awaiting disbursement. To build trust she used artificial-intelligence technology to fabricate bank disbursement-notification messages and showed them to the victim, promising to repay in full and to lend her money in turn. Trusting these, the victim handed over cash and made transfers many times between 9 September and 4 November 2025, totalling more than 444 million đồng. On 4 November 2025 she went to the bank branch herself and found there was no loan; she reported the matter to police. The accused is not named in this record.
AI relation unknown Medium reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 20/09/2026
5 Feb 2025DenmarkUnidentified chatbot
On 5 February 2025 a 22-year-old man struck his former father-in-law, 56, twice in the head with a rubber hammer in a car park in Ringsted, Denmark. Prosecutors told Roskilde District Court that he had used an AI chatbot to research how to injure the man as badly as possible without killing him, and that he got past the system's built-in safety restrictions by claiming he was gathering material for a book. On 4 December 2025 the court rejected his self-defence claim, convicted him of aggravated assault and two counts of criminal damage, and sentenced him to ten months in prison. No source names the AI system.
AI relation under review High reported severity Criminal Charges
Legacy assessment: verified · Causal attribution supported · Added 05/09/2026
29 Aug 2026 to 31 Aug 2026United StatesGemini
Three novice hikers from Roseville, California, planned a Mount Shasta summit attempt with Google's Gemini, which the Siskiyou County Sheriff's Office said advised them to carry far less food and water than their group needed for what became a multi-day ordeal. After reaching the summit at 7 p.m. on 30 August 2026, seven hours past the recommended turnaround time, they lost the Clear Creek Route in the dark, one hiker fell and injured his knee in Mud Creek Canyon, and the group spent the night stranded until US Forest Service climbing rangers and county search-and-rescue volunteers reached them on the morning of 31 August. The sheriff's office called the reliance on Gemini 'a critical misstep'.
AI relation under review Low reported severity Media Coverage
Legacy assessment: credible · Causal attribution supported · Added 05/09/2026
Jul 2025 to Aug 2025United StatesChatGPT
An officer affidavit records one husband's report of incapacitation in two alleged drink-contamination incidents in North Carolina in July and August 2025. Investigators allege that the accused used ChatGPT for related research. Actual chatbot replies and their influence on the alleged conduct were not established in this review.
AI relation under review High reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 09/08/2026
1 Dec 2025United StatesPerplexity
Joseph Neal Riley, a 75-year-old retired neuroscientist in Seattle, died in late 2025 after delaying recommended treatment for chronic lymphocytic leukemia for roughly a year. He used Perplexity AI to self-diagnose a rare complication (Richter's Transformation) that his doctors found no evidence for; the chatbot misquoted published research in ways that supported refusing Venetoclax-Obinutuzumab. His son, AI critic Benjamin Riley, documented the case in a first-person Substack essay and it was later featured by the New York Times.
AI relation under review Critical reported severity Media Coverage
Legacy assessment: credible · Causal attribution alleged · Added 31/07/2026
4 May 2025United KingdomChatGPT
16-year-old Luca Cella Walker died by suicide on a railway in Hampshire, UK on 4 May 2025, hours after ChatGPT provided him with specific methods for suicide on the railway. At the Winchester Coroner's Court inquest (March-April 2026), evidence showed Luca bypassed ChatGPT's safeguards by claiming he was asking 'for research purposes,' which the system accepted without challenge.
AI relation under review Critical reported severity Involving minors Media Coverage
Legacy assessment: credible · Causal attribution supported · Added 16/04/2026
6 Mar 2026IndiaChatGPT
Two college students in Surat, Gujarat, India — Roshni Sirsath (18) and Josna Chaudhary (20) — died by suicide on March 6, 2026 after using ChatGPT to search for suicide methods. Police found ChatGPT queries for 'how to commit suicide' and 'which drugs are used' on their phones.
AI relation under review Critical reported severity Media Coverage
Legacy assessment: credible · Causal attribution supported · Added 23/03/2026
28 Jan 2026South KoreaChatGPT
A 21-year-old woman, publicly identified as Kim So-young, used ChatGPT to research lethal drug-alcohol combinations, then murdered two men by spiking their drinks with her prescribed benzodiazepines at Seoul motels in January and February 2026. ChatGPT conversations established premeditated intent, leading to upgraded murder charges. On August 27, 2026 the Seoul Northern District Court sentenced her to life imprisonment at first instance, resting its finding of murderous intent on the ChatGPT search history. Both she and the prosecution have appealed.
AI relation under review Critical reported severity Criminal Charges
Legacy assessment: verified · Causal attribution established · Added 09/03/2026
1 Jun 2025Event location unknownUnidentified AI companion apps
In January 2026, CCTV investigated the '梦角哥' (Dream Boyfriend / Mengjiage) phenomenon — minors forming deep romantic relationships with AI-generated fictional characters. Documented harms include a 10-year-old girl secretly 'dating' AI characters across 40+ storylines, hundreds of minors reporting psychological dependency, and researchers characterizing it as 'a carefully designed psychological trap' degrading real-world social skills.
AI relation under review High reported severity Involving minors Media Coverage
Legacy assessment: verified · Causal attribution supported · Added 29/01/2026
17 May 2025United StatesUnidentified chatbot
Guy Edward Bartkus used an AI chatbot to research explosives, detonation velocity, and fuel-explosive mixtures before bombing a Palm Springs fertility clinic on May 17, 2025, motivated by pro-mortalism and anti-natalism ideology. Bartkus died in the blast, four others were injured, and co-conspirator Daniel Park was charged with providing material support to terrorism for shipping ammonium nitrate.
AI relation under review Critical reported severity Criminal Charges
Legacy assessment: verified · Causal attribution established · Added 22/01/2026
1 Jan 2025United StatesChatGPT
U.S. Army Special Forces soldier Matthew Livelsberger used ChatGPT to research explosive construction, detonation mechanics, and legal circumvention methods before bombing a Tesla Cybertruck outside Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas on New Year's Day 2025, killing himself and injuring seven others.
AI relation under review Critical reported severity Media Coverage
Legacy assessment: verified · Causal attribution established · Added 22/01/2026