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 The relays describe her becoming withdrawn, spending whole days on her phone, having it confiscated in class and using the app in secret after her mother told her to delete it; she likens that to an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 unknownChinaUnidentified mushroom-identification tool
A family of three from Wuhan, Hubei province, picked wild mushrooms on a mountain outside the city on a weekend shortly before 25 July 2026, according to a Hubei TV (经视直播) report published on QQ News on 25 July 2026 and relayed by The Paper on 27 July. The report says a parent who claimed years of mushroom-picking experience photographed the mushrooms with a phone so that AI could identify whether they were poisonous; the software gave no toxicity warning, and the family cooked and ate them, letting the daughter eat more. Five to six hours later all three had vomiting and diarrhoea. The report says the family at first declined admission and the child was treated as an outpatient; by the next morning the child's transaminase level had risen from 1.5 times to 10 times normal and she was admitted, then moved to the intensive care unit of Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, where, the report says, her liver indices reached 100 times normal and she was treated with blood perfusion and plasma exchange before being out of danger on the third day. The AI software is not named, its output is not reproduced, and the account comes from one broadcaster's report. This is a different family from the June 2026 Wuhan case involving a 9-year-old.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 09/10/2026
Jun 2026ChinaUnidentified mushroom-identification tool
A family from Wuhan, Hubei province, gathered wild mushrooms resembling the edible termite mushroom (jizong) during a mountain outing in June 2026 and, according to a Guangming Online post carried by The Paper on 5 July 2026 and an Asahi Shimbun report of 6 July citing the Changjiang Daily, ran an AI identification tool on them. The tool returned a "non-poisonous" result and the family cooked and ate the mushrooms. According to the Guangming Online post, all three family members vomited soon after the meal and again before dawn the next day; they were admitted to Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, where the 9-year-old child was moved to the paediatric intensive care unit the same afternoon. The post says the child had amatoxin poisoning that progressed to the most severe grade, with acute liver failure, hepatic encephalopathy and fluid in the chest and abdomen, and went home after eight days in hospital. The AI tool is not named, its output is not reproduced, and the account comes from one reporting chain.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 09/10/2026
Jun 2026ArgentinaUnidentified image tool
Perfil reported on 1 October 2026 that fake intimate images of female pupils, created with artificial intelligence, had circulated in the WhatsApp groups of second-year students at the Escuela Superior de Comercio Carlos Pellegrini, a secondary school run by the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). The girls are 13 and 14 years old. The case came to light in late June 2026, and the school acknowledged the chats on 30 June. According to the report, the students involved manipulated, spread and sold the material, and a message on classroom desks told the victims the boys would keep undressing and selling them. Families filed a complaint with the Buenos Aires City cybercrime prosecution unit (UFEDICI) on 16 July and say the school has not concluded disciplinary action. By 1 October the national Ministry of Human Capital had asked the UBA rector for a detailed report on the protective measures and sanctions applied.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources · Added 04/10/2026
2025IndonesiaUnidentified image and video tool
Bogor Regency police confirmed on 18 September 2026 that they are investigating a report that pupils of a private school in Cileungsi had their faces edited with artificial intelligence into pornographic content. The head of the women-and-children unit told Kumparan that so far three pupils had reported in a single police report, that the case began when a victim heard from a friend that someone was making content with their face using AI technology, and that investigators were still establishing who made the content and which program was used, under the Electronic Information and Transactions Law. A lawyer for the witnesses, quoted by Pojok Bogor and Uzone, says the victims number in the hundreds; that two former pupils, one as initiator and one as maker, have been reported and admitted the acts to witnesses; that police found thousands of suspected AI-manipulated photos and videos on a suspect's phone, some uploaded to websites including an online-gambling site; and that the case, reported on 19 May 2026, is believed to have run since 2025 while all involved were still pupils, some victims now being university students. Police say the case is at an early stage and asked the public not to draw conclusions.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources · Added 19/09/2026
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