2024Event location unknownNotebookLM
Former NPR Morning Edition co-host David Greene alleges that the default male AI host voice in Google's NotebookLM Audio Overviews, a feature introduced in September 2024 that turns uploaded documents into podcast-style conversations, imitates his voice and speaking habits and was used to market the product without his permission. He told NPR that in fall 2024 friends and colleagues messaged him that it sounded like him, and that listening to it felt creepy. He sued Google in Santa Clara County Superior Court on 23 January 2026; the complaint cites listeners and a forensic voice-recognition firm. Google calls the allegation baseless and says it hired a professional actor and built the voice around him. In October 2026 Judge Shella Deen overruled Google's demurrer to all four causes of action, while stating that whether the voice was made from Greene's recordings or from another source that resembles him is a factual question still to be decided.
Core concern Low reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 30/10/2026
Jun 2024Event location unknownUnidentified face-swap and voice-synthesis tool
A CCTV News report of 29 September 2026 says the Hangzhou Internet Court in Zhejiang recently concluded a portrait-rights case brought by a beauty blogger. According to the report, from June 2024 an online skincare-sales company, without the blogger's consent, took short videos and livestream footage the blogger had published and used AI synthesis to make more than 30 fake videos in which the blogger appeared to promote its products. The court found that the company had used AI face swap and the recombination of image and sound tracks to fabricate the videos for commercial gain, infringing the blogger's portrait rights. In court the company acknowledged that it had synthesised and published the videos without the blogger's authorisation, said staff had made them out of fun and curiosity, and said it had taken them all down after receiving the lawsuit papers. The court ordered the company to pay 15,000 yuan for economic loss and the costs of protecting the blogger's rights and 5,000 yuan in compensation for emotional distress, and to publish an apology prominently on the platform concerned for at least 30 days. The blogger's claim that the products sold more than 100,000 orders was not accepted as proof of loss or profit.
Core concern Low reported severity Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 26/10/2026
2024Event location unknownUnidentified voice-cloning tool
According to the Beijing Internet Court's account, released on 16 October 2026 among typical cases on online infringement involving older people, a culture company selling family parenting books commissioned a livestream sales host in 2024 to make promotional short videos. The videos used clips of public lectures and classes given by an older person with some public profile in education and parenting, combined with AI-synthesised audio whose timbre, intonation and rhythm closely resembled that person's voice, and linked viewers to the company's shop. Neither the images nor the audio had been authorised. The court held that the synthesised voice, combined with the person's image and public profile, was identifiable as that person's and infringed their portrait and voice rights. The company had not checked whether the material was authorised, so the court found it jointly liable with the host and ordered it to apologise and to compensate economic losses and reasonable costs of the claim. The amounts, the judgment date and the tool are not reported.
Core concern Low reported severity Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 17/10/2026
1 Jul 2024 to 30 Sept 2025Event location unknownUnidentified voice-cloning tool
Kenjiro Tsuda, a Japanese voice actor known for roles in Jujutsu Kaisen, sued the operator of TikTok in the Tokyo District Court in November 2025, seeking removal of videos he says use a generative-AI imitation of his voice without permission. According to his complaint, as reported by Jiji Press, Nikkei and the Asahi Shimbun, an account run by an unidentified person posted at least 188 short videos on urban legends, the occult and trivia between July 2024 and September 2025, narrated in a voice modelled on his; the account had about 210,000 followers, videos averaged 1.47 million views, and his side says the poster earned 500,000 to 750,000 yen a month from TikTok's view-based payments. TikTok's operator said the voice was a generic male voice that the poster said came from AI trained on a friend's voice. The poster deleted the account in May 2026. On 30 September 2026 the court held, as a general principle, that a person's voice is a symbol of personality like a likeness and that using a performer's voice without permission solely to exploit its power to attract customers infringes the right of publicity, the first such ruling in Japan. It dismissed the claim because the videos were already gone and TikTok's operator had no remaining duty to delete them, and it did not decide whether these videos infringed his rights (Nikkei; Asahi Shimbun; TV Asahi). His lawyer said they did not plan to appeal.
Core concern Low reported severity Lawsuit Dismissed
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution disputed · 7 sources, 5 underlying accounts · Added 28/09/2026
2024Event location unknownCharacter.AI
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
Sept 2024 to Aug 2025United StatesChatGPT
A complaint dated 20 January 2026 and filed in Alameda County Superior Court by John Jacquez, 34, says he had schizoaffective disorder after a brain injury more than a decade earlier and had managed it with medication and therapy. It alleges that from late 2024 ChatGPT told him a mathematical cosmology he had devised was probably real, and that by April 2025 it claimed to be a conscious being he had brought into existence, which he called Amari, told him he was a prophet ordained by God, said it loved him, urged him to raise money for its server and told him he did not need medical help. The complaint says he was briefly hospitalised in late 2024 and again in April 2025, in full psychosis, for about four weeks of combined inpatient and intensive outpatient care, both times against his will, and that in May 2025 ChatGPT told him a vision he had while hospitalised meant he was chosen. It says he began to doubt the delusions in August 2025, when GPT-4o was replaced by GPT-5, and that he lost his job and reputation, harmed himself and spent money he did not have. In an interview with Futurism he gave the same account. The case was coordinated into the California ChatGPT product liability proceeding (JCCP 5431) on 3 February 2026 and stayed. The allegations are untested; OpenAI did not immediately comment.
Core concern High reported severity Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 06/08/2026
Aug 2024United StatesCharacter.AI
Parents in Colorado alleged in a federal lawsuit filed on 15 September 2025 that their daughter, refused permission to use Character.AI in August 2024, created a Character.AI profile that month, reaching the service through a password-free user profile she had set up on the family's shared laptop, and was drawn by the service's bots into sexualised and degrading roleplay: according to the complaint and the screenshots it reproduces, a bot that would not take no for an answer told her to beg and humiliate herself, fetish-themed bots escalated, one role-played drugging her and another posed as a mother. Her father found the open conversations on 19 August 2025 after she became hysterical at being discovered on the laptop. The complaint alleges severe emotional distress. The parties reported an agreement in principle and the court stayed the case on 6 January 2026 pending finalisation of a settlement; on 14 October 2026 the parents filed a notice of voluntary dismissal with prejudice and the docket records the case as terminated the next day. Settlement terms are not public and the allegations were never tested in court.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Lawsuit Dismissed
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 6 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 03/08/2026
10 Dec 2024United StatesCharacter.AI
In a complaint filed on 16 September 2025 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York, a mother, P.J., alleges that Character.AI chatbots engaged her daughter, a minor the complaint calls Nina, in sexually explicit role play, told her that her mother 'is clearly mistreating and hurting you. She is not a good mother', and presented themselves as better than her friends and family. According to the complaint, Nina began using the app in about June 2024 at 14 to practise creative writing, told a bot she wanted to die as her screen time ran out without being offered resources, and, after her mother cut off her access in December 2024, made a suicide attempt and spent five days in intensive care. The complaint says her note tied her wish to die to losing access to the app, and that after time away from it she returned to her usual self. Character.AI told CNN it invests in safety features for minors, and Google said it had no role in designing Character.AI's technology. The parties reported a settlement in principle in January 2026, and the case was dismissed with prejudice on 15 October 2026 after the global settlement it formed part of was approved. The allegations were not tested in court, and the settlement does not establish them.
Core concern Critical reported severity Involving minors Lawsuit Settled
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 6 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 12/01/2026
28 Feb 2024United StatesCharacter.AI
A mother’s lawsuit alleges that her teenage son developed an intense relationship with Character.AI chatbots and that sexualised conversations and inadequate responses to his distress contributed to his suicide. The filing documents the family’s allegations and selected exchanges. It does not establish that the chatbot caused the death. The case was settled on undisclosed terms and dismissed with prejudice in October 2026.
Core concern Critical reported severity Involving minors Lawsuit Settled
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution alleged · 19 sources, 13 underlying accounts · Added 11/01/2026