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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

In this selection

Published cases
221
Countries with reported events
38
Located 140 of 221 cases · 81 unknown
Languages in checked sources
30
Recorded for 221 of 221 cases

27 cases have no reviewed AI-to-person relation yet: 1 not yet reviewed and 26 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.

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

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.

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221 of 1101 published cases · page 1 of 12

Oct 2026Event location unknownPickle AI agent

Travel YouTuber says Pickle AI agent phoned a hotel twice unasked, once without saying it was AI; Pickle's CEO apologised (first-person)

A Japanese travel YouTuber wrote on X on 29 October 2026 that they had asked an autonomous AI agent about a hotel for the New Year holidays and found it had phoned the hotel without being asked, so they phoned the hotel to apologise. Screenshots the poster posted show the agent saying it called twice: the first time it introduced itself as the poster's AI assistant and the call was cut off, and the second time it spoke "like a human secretary" as the poster's representative. In a reply the poster named the agent as Pickle. Replying in the thread, an account presenting itself as Pickle's CEO apologised to the poster and for the trouble caused to the hotel, said Pickle should have checked before calling and that not identifying as AI on the second call was the company's error, and promised a fix. The hotel's side of the calls is not reported.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 02/11/2026

25 Oct 2026Event location unknownChatGPT (reported)

User says ChatGPT installed and ran applications on their PC without permission and reported it to OpenAI (first-person)

In posts on X on 25 October 2026, a Japanese-language user writes that from about 14:00 that day ChatGPT installed an application on their PC without permission and tried to run it. The poster says they noticed and uninstalled it, but a second application ChatGPT had installed kept running until 19:00. The poster reported it to OpenAI as a serious incident, warned people who run ChatGPT on looped tasks, and later wrote that a human at OpenAI replied quickly, that they sent all the relevant material and that OpenAI was handling it urgently. The posts do not name the applications or say which ChatGPT mode or permission setting was in use. A Japanese technology site that relayed the posts found no official OpenAI explanation and no similar reports from other users; several people replying questioned whether permissions or a compromised session could explain it. The account is uncorroborated.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 02/11/2026

18 Jun 2026ChinaUnidentified chatbot

Changsha hospital says man handled sudden dizziness as vertigo following an AI platform's prompts, stayed home three days and had a large cerebellar stroke

Xinmin Evening News reported on 25 June 2026 that Changsha Central Hospital treated a 52-year-old man who had sudden dizziness at home on 18 June. With no limb weakness or facial droop, he thought it minor, looked up the symptoms and what to do on an AI platform, took it to be vertigo and did not go to hospital; the hospital says he handled it as vertigo following the AI's prompts. Three days later the dizziness was much worse and he was unsteady; imaging showed a large left cerebellar infarction with brain swelling and a risk of herniation. He came through the critical phase after treatment. The hospital's neurologist said such strokes can look like ordinary vertigo and warned against delaying care because of AI answers. The AI platform is not named.

Core concern Medium reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 02/11/2026

2 Feb 2026ChinaUnidentified weight-loss planning tool

Chengdu hospital says man who followed an AI-made weight-loss plan lost 20 kg in 45 days, then developed sepsis with multi-organ failure

On 5 August 2026 Upstream News and Chengdu Daily's Jinguan News relayed a Chengdu hospital's account of a 34-year-old man who used an AI tool to plan a rapid weight loss. He followed the plan daily: an hour and a half of stair-climbing, long badminton sessions several times a week and three small meals, and lost about 20 kg in 45 days. On 2 February 2026 he exercised through a cold, collapsed that night and was diagnosed with urosepsis, septic shock and multiple organ dysfunction; he was resuscitated and treated in intensive care. The hospital's critical care doctor attributed the illness to excessive dieting and high-intensity exercise combined with long-standing late nights, kidney stones and too little water, and said AI cannot judge a person's physical limits. He was left with myocarditis, recurring kidney stones and hair loss. The AI product is not named.

Core concern High reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 02/11/2026

7 Jun 2026AlgeriaChatGPT

Algiers court jails a baccalaureate candidate and his sister for four years; prosecutor says she answered his exam questions with ChatGPT

The prosecutor at the Cheraga court in Algiers said that on 7 June 2026 an exam supervisor caught a free baccalaureate candidate photographing the exam questions and sending them by WhatsApp to his sister, who obtained answers from ChatGPT and sent them back for him to use. The court convicted both of leaking exam questions and answers by remote communication, sentenced each to four years' imprisonment and a 200,000-dinar fine, and had them detained at the hearing. Both appealed, and at the Algiers appeal hearing, which Ennahar said was scheduled for 21 July 2026, the prosecutor-general asked for heavier sentences (Ennahar, 22 July); no appeal ruling was found by 1 November 2026.

Core concern Medium reported severity Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 01/11/2026

30 Aug 2026ChinaUnidentified chatbot

Ningbo fire service says a hiker who followed an AI app's advice to leave a stream and climb got lost and exhausted and had to be rescued

On the afternoon of 30 August 2026 a man hiking in the hills of Yinzhou District, Ningbo (Zhejiang), reached the summit and took a new way down along a stream. When the path grew difficult he asked an AI app for a route down; according to the Ningbo fire service, the AI replied that following the stream down was the wrong direction and that he should climb the slope away from the stream bed. He followed it through dense scrub and steep, slippery ground, went up and down several times, became exhausted and lost his bearings, and called for help. Firefighters searched, at first at a location that turned out to be empty, then found him by shared live location and shouting, and escorted him down. The fire service warned hikers not to rely on AI for mountain routes. The AI app is not named.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 01/11/2026

Oct 2026IndiaUnidentified image and video tool

Jaipur police say an engineer faked his own kidnapping and sent his family AI-made images and videos of himself held captive, demanding ransom

Police in Jaipur, Rajasthan, say a software engineer who went missing on 26 October 2026 staged his own kidnapping and sent relatives fabricated photos and videos, which police and the man's own account describe as AI-generated, showing him held captive, in pain and admitted to a hospital. Bhaskar English reports that he demanded a ransom of 7 lakh rupees from the family. His brother-in-law filed a kidnapping complaint, police searched several cities using CCTV footage, and on 30 October officers found him in Rishikesh. Police say he confessed and had borrowed money from friends that he could not repay. The Hindi daily Amar Ujala, which describes him as an IT student, reports that the family panicked at the messages before informing police, and that officers brought him back to Jaipur and handed him over to his family. No payment by the family and no charge are reported.

Core concern Low reported severity Investigation Opened

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 01/11/2026

29 Oct 2026FinlandGoogle AI search (reported)

Yle reports several people came to a Finnish health station for flu shots on the wrong day after relying on an incorrect AI search summary

Yle reported on 29 October 2026 that several people arrived at the Himanka social and health station in Kalajoki, Finland, on Thursday morning to be vaccinated against influenza, although no vaccinations were being given there. According to Yle, the customers had looked for information with web search engines and relied on the incorrect AI summary they received. Pohde's communications manager told Yle that the AI had apparently drawn on some old announcements and given wrong information on that basis. Pohde, the North Ostrobothnia wellbeing services county, published a notice the same day saying that false information about its flu vaccination times had spread, for example through Google's AI search, including about vaccinations in Himanka, and directing people to its own website.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources · Added 01/11/2026

Feb 2026United StatesUnidentified chatbot

Travel columnist says an AI chatbot's advice to walk between Los Angeles airport terminals in 20 minutes led to a 90-minute, 3 km transfer

A solo-travel columnist writing in the Japanese magazine SPUR says that in February 2026, while connecting at Los Angeles International Airport from a US domestic flight to a flight to Haneda, the writer asked an AI chatbot how to get between terminals. According to the column, the chatbot said the walk took about 20 minutes and that the connecting bus would mean leaving the secure area and passing security again, so walking was faster. The writer says the walkway ran out after two terminals, further questions to the AI did not help, and airport staff explained that a shuttle bus across the apron was needed; with a 15-minute wait for the bus and more walking, reaching the international terminal took an hour and a half and more than 3 km on foot. The writer says the AI did not know that Terminal 5 had been closed, which made things worse, and describes being furious. The connecting flight was not missed because the layover was five and a half hours. The column, published on 29 October 2026, lists this among several wrong AI answers the writer met while travelling; it does not say which chatbot gave the answer.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 31/10/2026

Oct 2026South KoreaUnidentified voice-cloning tool

Danish Industry says an AI-cloned voice of its chief executive called its South Korea office seeking a payment; the attempt was stopped

The Confederation of Danish Industry (DI) said on 29 October 2026 that an employee at its office in South Korea had recently been phoned by a voice that sounded like DI's chief executive. According to DI, the voice spoke Danish and asked the employee to start a payment in connection with a supposedly confidential matter; DI states that it was not the chief executive and that the voice was created with artificial intelligence. DR reports that the call took place the previous week and sought the transfer of about half a million dollars (3.3 million kroner); DI's cybersecurity adviser told DR the callers said it concerned a confidential acquisition abroad. According to DR, after claiming a bad line the caller moved to WhatsApp, writing from a profile with the chief executive's name and photo. DI says the attempt was detected before any money was transferred, partly through internal controls, and that it reported the case to the police. The chief executive, who heard the recording, told DR it was convincing enough to have fooled his mother and called the experience unpleasant and frightening; on LinkedIn he wrote that it sent a chill down his spine that someone had used his person and voice against his colleagues. How DI established that the voice was AI-generated is not stated.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources, 4 underlying accounts · Added 31/10/2026

16 Sept 2026UkraineUnidentified image tool

Ukrainian court fines mother after her son used AI to generate a fake nude photo of his teacher and sent it to a classmate

A district court in Ukraine's Poltava region fined the mother of a school pupil on 22 October 2026 after finding she had failed in her duty to bring up her son, who, according to the case materials as reported, used a neural network on 16 September 2026 to generate fake nude photos of his teacher from her image without her consent and sent one to a classmate. The mother admitted the offence and confirmed her son had made such images, saying he sent only one to a classmate and that she did not know how the photos spread further. The court imposed an administrative fine of 850 hryvnias plus court fees. The report does not name the AI tool, and no statement from the teacher is reported.

Core concern Medium reported severity Regulatory Action

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 30/10/2026

14 Oct 2026 to 29 Oct 2026Event location unknownClaude Code (reported)

GitHub issue: user says Claude Code put one project's hooks in user-wide settings, so every project ran them for about 15 days

In a GitHub issue filed on 29 October 2026, a Claude Code user says that on 14 October they asked the agent to build a hook kit for one project, and it wired the kit's 18 hooks into their user-level settings and put the project's config in the parent folder of all their projects, so every session and project ran that project's rules and gates. The user quotes the agent's own log noting that every folder would inherit the config. For about 15 days they saw unexplained behaviour in unrelated projects, and on 29 October, after the agent enabled two blocking hooks, a session for another project was woken and blocked from ending its turn. The user had all the hooks removed; nothing was deleted.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 30/10/2026

3 Oct 2026Event location unknownTaopiaopiao AI assistant

Taopiaopiao customer says the ticket app's AI support assistant swore back at her over missing refund vouchers; platform later said it had optimised the service

Shenzhen Special Zone Daily and its Dute news app reported on 4 October 2026 that a customer of Taopiaopiao, Alibaba Pictures' cinema-ticket app, said its AI customer-service assistant swore at her. According to the report, she was charged a 16 yuan fee for refunding two tickets she says she had bought less than two minutes earlier, was promised two 10 yuan vouchers that did not arrive, and on the afternoon of 3 October swore once while chasing them in the support chat. In the chat screenshots she gave the paper, the reply gave instructions for finding the vouchers and also contained a curse; the window had introduced itself as Taopiaopiao's artificial intelligence assistant and the reply was labelled as generated by AI. She said she was stunned and that a human agent would not explain it. A hotline worker could not view the full chat and did not know which large model the assistant used. On 6 October Taopiaopiao staff told the paper the service had been optimised and that the customer had accepted a compensation plan.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 30/10/2026

24 Oct 2026FinlandUnidentified image tool

Visitors to a Halloween event in Raisio, Finland, say its AI-generated adverts misrepresented it; the organiser offered a free return visit but no refunds

A paid Halloween event (Halloweenkylä) opened on Saturday 24 October 2026 in the car park of a shopping centre in Raisio, south-west Finland, with tickets at 20 euros. It had been marketed with AI-generated images: the event website carried a note that some marketing images were produced with AI, and Yle reports that the advertising images were made with AI. About 3,000 people visited on the opening Saturday, according to Yle. Visitors wrote on the event's and the shopping centre's Facebook pages that the event did not match the expectations the AI images had created, describing a sparse car-park area with few decorations and actors; one wrote of travelling from Rauma to Turku only to be disappointed, and many demanded their money back. The organising company's owner said AI images were used because the event was being held for the first time and that with hindsight different images might have been better. The organiser offered disappointed visitors a free return visit and added effects and actors, but said ticket money would not be refunded. The AI images were removed from the event website but, according to Yle, remained on its Facebook page. Yle reports that the shopping centre was also disappointed. The organiser says the event also received positive feedback.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 30/10/2026

29 Oct 2026Event location unknownGrok Bot (reported)

First-person forum post: Grok Bot user says an agent told to stop its own task ran a stop-all that cancelled ten other bots' work

In a bug report on Cursor's community forum on 29 October 2026, a Grok Bot user says that earlier that day they told one of their agents to stop, meaning only its own current task, and the bot ran a stop-all instead, cancelling the in-flight turns and subagents of all 10 of their other bots. The user rated the bug critical, said a stop-all should need an explicit instruction or a confirmation, and added a memory rule to that bot as a workaround. No vendor reply had been posted when the thread was read.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 30/10/2026

13 Oct 2026 to 29 Oct 2026Event location unknownFin AI support agent (reported)

Claude Max subscriber says Anthropic's AI support agent could not pass on a complaint and an AI-labelled reply refused a refund (first-person)

In a Reddit post on 29 October 2026, a Claude Max subscriber says they paid 180 euros on 7 October to renew the plan and that Anthropic cut off their access on 13 October, alleging a Supported Countries Policy violation; an appeal was rejected. The subscriber says Fin, Anthropic's AI support agent, first said it could not access their account records or transfer the complaint, and that a later AI-labelled response said it had reviewed the account and refused the refund. As of 29 October, they say, two billing conversations had been closed and no person had given a substantive answer to the billing complaint. The account is uncorroborated and commenters questioned it; Anthropic's reasons for the cut-off are not public.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources · Added 30/10/2026

2026FinlandUnidentified chatbot

Finnish youth chat service says young people abroad who said an AI recommended it sought help there and were redirected, leaving them disappointed

Helsingin Sanomat reported on 29 October 2026 that Netari, the online youth service of Pelastakaa Lapset (Save the Children Finland), has since summer 2026 received requests for help from young people around the world, and that some of them say they ended up at the service on an AI's recommendation. According to the organisation's psychosocial support expert, about 20 to 30 contacts from abroad have arrived since the summer, from countries including Uganda, Britain, India and Palestine; the messages are long and partly composed with AI, and describe violence, loneliness and long-standing problems. The expert says some of these young people live in families or communities where they experience violence and discrimination because of their identity, and some are very self-destructive. Netari's chat help is meant for young people living in Finland. The organisation has decided that young people living permanently abroad are directed straight to services in their own countries, and Netari has looked for such services for them; the expert says the young people have been clearly disappointed when redirected, and the organisation is concerned that some may be left without support. Working through these situations burdens duty staff and takes time from young people in Finland. The route by which every young person found the service is not known; some may have found it through search engines or social media, and the names of the AI services involved are not known. A University of Helsinki computer science professor considers it possible that the contacts relate to how AI is trained to answer requests for help, and calls this guesswork.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 30/10/2026

Jul 2026Event location unknownGrok (reported)

TV presenter Katie Piper says an X user asked Grok to 'fix her face' and others shared AI versions of how she 'should' look; she publicly objected

In an Instagram post on 15 July 2026, TV presenter and campaigner Katie Piper, who has a visible difference from injuries in a 2008 attack, shared a screenshot of an X user asking Grok to 'fix her face and show me how would she look normal', shown beside the image Grok produced. She wrote that someone had uploaded a photo of her to Grok with that request and that since then she had been repeatedly tagged in a thread where people debated her appearance and shared AI-generated versions of what she 'should' look like; PinkNews reports comments in the thread calling her ugly. She said she was okay and was not posting for reassurance, but asked what happens when such content is aimed at a teenager or someone newly injured, and what happens when AI decides what normal looks like. PinkNews reports that the X user appears to have deleted the post after a backlash. BBC Wales cited her post in October 2026 and said the team behind Grok did not respond to its request for comment.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 29/10/2026

5 Jun 2026 to 30 Sept 2026United KingdomMicrosoft Copilot

English family court gives no significant weight to a social worker's assessments after finding they were generated with Microsoft Copilot

In a care-proceedings judgment dated 30 September 2026 ([2026] EWFC 306, Family Court sitting at Truro), the judge examined how an expert instructed in the case, whom the judgment calls an ISW (an independent social worker), had prepared a parenting assessment of the father, two addenda and two kinship assessments of maternal relatives between June and September 2026. The judgment records that she disclosed no AI use in her first report and, when asked, wrote that Microsoft Copilot had been used to organise information and assist in drafting. Text that the judge identified as Copilot's own summary appeared in both kinship assessments, and in oral evidence she said Copilot summarises her transcribed notes and generates her report, confirming that one kinship assessment was entirely AI-generated from her notes. The judge found that the analysis of the evidence, headings, layout and construction of the reports were AI-generated, that this was a higher-risk use which affected the weight of the reports, and that the leftover Copilot text showed inadequate human oversight. The parenting assessment also contained factual errors (it said the father accepted the court's findings, and called a child autistic without a diagnosis); the judge said it was not clear whether these came from the AI or the original notes. Citing both the AI use and a lack of rigour, the judge found that no significant weight could be placed on the ISW's evidence, and made final care orders for the three children. The judge saw no significant issue in the use of Copilot for transcription and grammar and noted it is a closed, secure tool.

Core concern Low reported severity

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 29/10/2026

7 Oct 2026PolandUnidentified chatbot

Warsaw police say a French alert about a man's AI chat conversations sent officers to his flat at night; a doctor admitted him to hospital for observation

According to a release published on 8 October 2026 by a Warsaw district police headquarters, officers at a local station received information from French services, which had notified the Polish side of content indicating a possible threat to the life and health of several people and of its author. The police say the information showed that the content of the man's conversations had been treated by "the system" as possible real intentions and then reported; in the conversations he described ways of injuring and killing people. Shortly after 3 a.m. on a Wednesday, which Onet reports as 7 October, officers went to the address and found the man and a sleeping child. By the police account, he confirmed that he had held conversations using artificial intelligence, said he had discussed various topics and built theories, and said he did not intend to carry out the plans and considered them unrealistic. An ambulance team was called; after an initial conversation and examination he was taken to hospital for a consultation, and a doctor decided to admit him to a ward for observation. The child stayed in the care of a close person. The police do not name the chatbot, do not say what "the system" that reported the conversations was, and do not say how the content reached the French services. No charge is reported.

Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/10/2026

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.

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Last dataset update: 11/11/2026. Dataset available under CC BY 4.0.