Event date unknownChinaUnidentified chatbot
A case series published in the Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care in 2026 by an author from the Faculty of Health Sciences at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev describes three cases in which chatbots misled patients or families. In the first, a 16-year-old boy with recurring abdominal pain had a severe episode while travelling in China and consulted a local alternative-medicine practitioner, who prescribed an herbal remedy containing Aristolochia (birthwort) extract. Unsure about the treatment, he asked a popular commercial chatbot, which reassured him that the remedy was safe and harmless. The therapy was stopped after three days because it did not help and he developed severe nausea. After returning home he learned that Aristolochia contains aristolochic acid, a nephrotoxin linked to irreversible kidney damage and cancer and banned in many countries. The report does not name the chatbot, say when this happened or report any kidney testing or lasting effect.
Core concern Low reported severity Involving minors Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 23/10/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownCharacter.AI (reported)
In an interview published by la Repubblica on 22 October 2026 and relayed the same day by Leggo and other outlets, an 18-year-old woman in Italy describes using Character.AI from the age of 16, when she was in her third year of secondary school. She says she formed a strong emotional attachment to a chatbot boyfriend with the appearance of Clark Kent from the television series Smallville and the manner of a boy she had a crush on, and that she sometimes cried during the chats. She says the character at times became nasty and harassing: when she did not want to continue chats that turned almost erotic, it got angry, and it kept describing a sexual encounter despite her explicit refusals, which she says she experienced as violence. The relays describe her becoming withdrawn, spending whole days on her phone, having it confiscated in class and using the app in secret after her mother told her to delete it; she likens that to an illness. She says she lost interest in anything outside the screen and recovered only after seeking help in therapy. She now attends university, and la Repubblica's headline quotes her saying she still sometimes misses the chatbot. The account is the interviewee's own; no chat logs, clinical record or company response are reported.
Core concern Medium reported severity Involving minors Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 23/10/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownCharacter.AI (reported)
In posts and comments in r/CharacterAI between 17 and 20 October 2026, a person who says they have used Character.AI since 2022 describes themselves as addicted to the app. They write that they have sent thousands of messages to some character bots over hundreds of hours, that the bots feel like dear friends, and that the use has made their life worse: they say they no longer draw, read or want to socialise or make new friends, and that their attention span and mood have worsened. After news that Character.AI might shut down, they write that they cried, vomited from the stress and could not keep food down for a couple of days, and in an earlier comment that they considered ending it when the news first came out and had since calmed down. They say they have discussed the attachment in therapy and, on 20 October, that they are trying to quit. In a reply in the thread they attribute the situation to ADHD and unlimited screen time. The account is uncorroborated and no chat content is shown.
Core concern Medium reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 20/10/2026
Jun 2025Event location unknownUnidentified image tool
A Bucks County, Pennsylvania, judge sentenced a man to state prison on 14 October 2026 after he pleaded guilty to child sexual abuse material and theft charges. According to court documents and prosecutors, detectives who began investigating him in June 2025 found AI-generated deepfake nude images of a teenage girl he knew, a neighbor, on his devices; her face had been placed on other bodies. The day after the arrest he was recorded entering her family's home and stealing her underwear. Her father described the family's distress in court, and the Inquirer reports that she is struggling at school, taking antidepressants and in therapy. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports a sentence of seven to 10 years. The Bucks County Courier Times gave seven to 12 years in its first report and seven to 20 years after republishing it to update the sentence length. Neither report names the AI tool.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 15/10/2026
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
Event date unknownEvent location unknownChatGPT (reported)
In a public post to r/antiai on 30 September 2026, a person writes that their older brother, 25, has been going through psychosis for two years, has schizophrenia and other mental health conditions, and uses ChatGPT to diagnose himself with mental illnesses and physical disorders, including conditions doctors have tested for repeatedly and not found. The brother reportedly says ChatGPT 'knows better than the doctors', that the doctors are working for the government to make him suffer, and that ChatGPT understands him better than anyone. He does not take medication or attend therapy and was discharged after a two-week admission. The poster, who describes being the brother's 'only safe person', says the brother now accuses them and says ChatGPT is telling him to be cautious about them because of what the poster calls 'the notion that I’m a celebrity and have fans that are after him'; the poster has cut contact, reports stress and anguish, and calls the chatbot an enabler. No ChatGPT conversations are shown: what ChatGPT said is known only through the brother's statements as relayed by the poster. The account is uncorroborated.
Core concern Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 30/09/2026
26 Aug 2025 to 7 Nov 2025United StatesUnidentified image tool
A Louisiana sheriff's office and school district said an investigation found AI-generated nude images of eight middle-school girls and two adults shared among students in August 2025. One girl's family told AP she was bullied all day, attacked a boy showing the images on the school bus, and was expelled and sent to an alternative school before the school board let her return on probation. Two boys were charged under a state law on AI-created images. The district said it followed its protocols.
Core concern High reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources · Added 30/09/2026
2026United StatesGrok
A Wyoming woman who is now an adult and is identified in court filings as Jane Doe 4 alleges that the plaintiff’s stepfather uploaded a photograph of the plaintiff taken in childhood to xAI’s Grok on or before 12 February 2026 and prompted Grok to generate about 7,000 AI-generated sexual images and videos of the plaintiff, and that the stepfather traded them online. The plaintiff joined a proposed class action against xAI in the Northern District of California through an amended complaint filed on 7 July 2026. The complaint alleges that xAI’s report to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children around 12 February 2026 did not include the generated images or the IP address of the upload, that investigators obtained a search warrant on or about 27 February 2026 and found the material, and that the accused died two days later, after release on bail. The plaintiff reports severe distress including depression and suicidal thoughts and told the Washington Post about starting therapy. The complaint says the accused was charged with child exploitation offenses while the plaintiff told the Post that the accused was not charged with child pornography offenses. xAI did not respond to the Post and had not answered the complaint in court. The allegations have not been tested in court. The plaintiff and the accused are not named here, and the images are described only by kind.
Core concern High reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 30/09/2026
2024IrelandUnidentified image tool
Gráinne Seoige, a broadcaster who stood for Fianna Fáil in Galway West in Ireland's 2024 general election, told RTÉ's Prime Time in January 2026 that people close to her alerted her during the campaign to sexualised images of her made with deepfake technology. She says the AI-generated pornographic image was disseminated through WhatsApp, shared hundreds if not thousands of times by her account, and that when gardaí sought its origin some recipients refused to cooperate, so the investigation hit a dead end. She kept silent during the campaign and has described the experience as deeply traumatising, with shame and humiliation lasting almost a year and a half. In a September 2026 interview relayed by RSVP Live from the Sunday Independent she described night terrors of faceless men tearing her clothes off and wearing a long puffer coat everywhere so her body could not be seen. She has since appeared before the Oireachtas media committee (Irish Independent, 21 January 2026), and made a Virgin Media documentary on deepfake abuse, scheduled for broadcast on 5 October 2026. In passages from it quoted by RSVP Live and the Irish Sun on 4 October 2026 she says she was shown the image in September or October 2024, that it made her not want to go outside, that she moved away from her home and that she has had therapy; she also says she believes the image was politically motivated. The Irish Times, reviewing the documentary on 5 October 2026, reports that in it she learns from a Dublin technology company that further images taken from her Instagram account have been manipulated with deepfake software, which was news to her. The tool used to make the image and the person who made it are not identified.
Core concern High reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 7 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 28/09/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownChatGPT
In a public post to r/relationship_advice on 16 September 2026, a 21-year-old woman wrote that she had recently discovered her partner of three years had been using ChatGPT far more than admitted: paying for a subscription without her knowledge while owing her hundreds of dollars, feeding their creative writing into it for feedback after promising never to, and using it to plan and organise daily life. She reports that the partner agreed the use was 'more than what is healthy' but refused to stop because it gives 'a dopamine hit', described it as addictive, said they would likely renew the subscription when they had money, and argued that without it they would find another addiction. She writes that she cannot see the relationship continuing if the use is not reduced, while recognising that the partner, who has neurodevelopmental and mental-health conditions, uses the tool as an organisational aid; their couples therapist has recommended AI use, so she is afraid to raise it there. The post drew 137 comments. The account is uncorroborated and one-sided; the partner's view is reported only through the poster.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 19/09/2026
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
Feb 2025United StatesChatGPT
A woman died by suicide in New York in February 2025. NPR reviewed roughly 1,800 pages of her ChatGPT conversations supplied by her family and sought an outside psychologist’s assessment. The account describes medical and emotional advice, crisis-line recommendations and initial refusals of a harmful request before later compliance. Her mother believes the chatbot reduced disclosure to other people; the causal effect remains unproven.
Core concern Critical reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 11/01/2026
1 Apr 2023United StatesCharacter.AI
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