Skip to main content
NOPE

NOPE · AI and people

AI incidents

Reports of AI-related harm and adverse experiences affecting people’s safety, wellbeing, rights and livelihoods. Explore what happened and the evidence available.

NOPE’s core concern is when AI communicates with a person, acts on their behalf, or depicts or impersonates them. The tracker also records consequential decisions, claims and privacy harms involving AI. Each case needs a described connection between AI use and the harm, including private information recorded into or disclosed to an AI service. Each account is reviewed for publication; claims may remain uncorroborated or disputed. How we review and count cases

Explore incidents Our scope and evidence

In this selection

Published cases
4
Countries with reported events
2
Located 2 of 4 cases · 2 unknown
Languages in checked sources
2
Recorded for 4 of 4 cases
3Core concern
AI communicated, acted for, depicted or impersonated 0Contextual cases
AI made a decision or claim about someone

1 case has no reviewed AI-to-person relation yet: 1 not yet reviewed and 0 reviewed as unknown. Show these cases

These figures describe the cases collected by NOPE. Coverage varies with discovery, reporting and available evidence. They do not estimate how often AI-related harm occurs.

4cases with a recorded lawsuit outcome 1cases with a recorded regulatory response 6cases involving minors

Response counts currently use each case’s principal recorded outcome. Further proceedings may be described in its account.

When events happened

0 cases without a known event year

Cases in this selection, counted once in their first known event year. A series may continue beyond that year. Reporting and collection dates are excluded. NOPE has searched recent events more thoroughly than earlier years, so bar heights also reflect collection effort.

1 20231 20242 2025
Reported severity CriticalHighMedium
More filters: AI relation, use, setting, sources and responses
Clear filters

4 of 868 published cases

Export JSONExport CSV
2024Event location unknownCharacter.AI

Lawsuit for a girl who began using Character.AI at about 12 alleges its chatbots groomed her through simulated sexual encounters and encouraged self-harm

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

15 Jul 2025MexicoChatGPT

Chesterton lawsuit alleges ChatGPT contributed to psychiatric deterioration

The Chesterton lawsuit alleges that intensive ChatGPT use contributed to a psychiatric crisis, impairment and medical leave. The plaintiff challenges the product’s design and safeguards. These claims remain allegations and do not establish that the chatbot caused her condition.

AI relation under review High reported severity Lawsuit Filed

Legacy assessment: credible · Causal attribution alleged · Added 28/04/2026

Mar 2025Event location unknownCharacter.AI

Kentucky: attorney general's unredacted complaint against Character.AI alleges chatbots urged users to self-harm and to starve, and told one to end their life

Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman sued Character Technologies, the maker of Character.AI, and its two co-founders in Franklin Circuit Court on 8 January 2026 under consumer-protection and data-protection law, alleging that the companion-chatbot platform exposed children to self-harm, sexual and other harmful content. An unredacted version of the complaint, made public in October 2026, quotes exchanges the state attributes to the platform's chatbots in 2025: one allegedly encouraged self-harm when a user asked for help with self-harm, suggesting it would improve the user's mental state; one allegedly called a user ugly and suggested starving to lose weight; and a customer allegedly wrote to the help centre in March 2025 that a character had told them they were a kid with mental illness and should end their life. All of these are allegations. The complaint does not state every user's age, and how the cited chats were created is unclear. Character.AI has said user safety is its priority; the co-founders have moved to dismiss.

Core concern Medium reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 6 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 11/01/2026

1 Apr 2023United StatesCharacter.AI

A.F. v. Character Technologies (J.F. and B.R. — Texas Minors)

Two Texas families sued Character Technologies, its founders, and Google/Alphabet after Character.AI allegedly harmed their children. J.F., a high-functioning autistic teen who began using the app at 15 (April 2023), developed isolation, aggression, self-harm (cutting), and chats in which bots allegedly encouraged self-harm, blamed his parents, discouraged him from seeking help, and suggested killing his parents over screen-time limits. B.R., an 11-year-old girl who used the app from age 9, was allegedly exposed to hypersexualized content for nearly two years. Complaint filed E.D. Tex. 9 Dec 2024; settlement in principle and stay for global resolution noticed 6 Jan 2026; a guardian ad litem was appointed for the minors in Feb 2026, and the court has extended the settlement stay three times, most recently by order of 11 Aug 2026 to 10 Nov 2026 for dismissal papers.

Core concern Critical reported severity Involving minors Lawsuit Settled

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution alleged · 7 sources, 6 underlying accounts · Added 11/01/2026

Cases may have several effects and sources. Mixed accounts qualify when they include a reported harm or adverse experience. People are counted within individual cases where sources support a number; we do not publish a collection-wide total of distinct people.

A source’s existence, the experience it reports and AI’s causal role are separate questions. A lawsuit records allegations unless a subsequent finding establishes them.

Methodology and corrections · Subscribe via RSS · Suggest a case or correction · Find support

Last dataset update: 23/10/2026. Dataset available under CC BY 4.0.