AI Incident Database
Browse AI incidents
Every incident record (metadata only) from the weekly snapshot of 2026-09-07. Filter, then export the selection with its licence attached; each row links to the full record and its reports.
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Security Robot Drowns Itself in a Fountain AIID ↗
A Knightscope K5 security robot ran itself into a water fountain in Washington, DC.
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Deepfake Obama Introduction of Deepfakes AIID ↗
University of Washington researchers made a deepfake of Obama, followed by Jordan Peele
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Houston ISD's EVAAS Teacher-Evaluation System Reportedly Put Teachers' Jobs at Risk Through Unverifiable Scores AIID ↗
From 2011 to 2015, Houston Independent School District used SAS Institute’s Education Value-Added Assessment System (EVAAS) to rate teacher effectiveness from student test-score growth. Teachers alleged that proprietary, unverifiable EVAAS scores contributed to terminations and contract nonrenewals. On May 4, 2017, a federal judge allowed due-process claims over the system to proceed.
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Nissan's "Automatic Emergency Braking" False Positives Posed Traffic Risks to Drivers AIID ↗
Nissan's Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) feature was reported in a series of complaints for false positives and abrupt braking behaviors, endangering car occupants and traffic participants.
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High-Toxicity Assessed on Text Involving Women and Minority Groups AIID ↗
Google's Perspective API, which assigns a toxicity score to online text, seems to award higher toxicity scores to content involving non-white, male, Christian, heterosexual phrases.
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Alexa Plays Pornography Instead of Kids Song AIID ↗
An Amazon Echo Dot using the Amazon Alex software started to play pornographic results when a child asked it to play a song.
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Reinforcement Learning Reward Functions in Video Games AIID ↗
OpenAI published a post about its findings when using Universe, a software for measuring and training AI agents to conduct reinforcement learning experiments, showing that the AI agent did not act in the way intended to complete a videogame.
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Poor Performance of Tesla Factory Robots AIID ↗
The goal of manufacturing 2,500 Tesla Model 3's per week was falling short by 500 cars/week, and employees had to be "borrowed" from Panasonic in a shared factory to help hand-assemble lithium batteries for Tesla.
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LinkedIn Search Prefers Male Names AIID ↗
An investigation by The Seattle Times in 2016 found a gender bias in LinkedIn's search engine.
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Common Biases of Vector Embeddings AIID ↗
Researchers from Boston University and Microsoft Research, New England demonstrated gender bias in the most common techniques used to embed words for natural language processing (NLP).
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Security Robot Rolls Over Child in Mall AIID ↗
On July 7, 2016, a Knightscope K5 autonomous security robot collided with a 16-month old boy while patrolling the Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto, CA.
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A Collection of Tesla Autopilot-Involved Crashes AIID ↗
Multiple unrelated car accidents result in varying levels of harm have been occurred while a Tesla's autopilot was in use.
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COMPAS Algorithm Reportedly Performs Poorly in Crime Recidivism Prediction AIID ↗
Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions (COMPAS), a recidivism risk-assessment algorithmic tool used in the judicial system to assess likelihood of defendants' recidivism, is found to be less accurate than random untrained human evaluators.
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Northpointe Risk Models AIID ↗
An algorithm developed by Northpointe and used in the penal system is two times more likely to incorrectly label a black person as a high-risk re-offender and is two times more likely to incorrectly label a white person as low-risk for reoffense according to a ProPublica review.
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Is Pokémon Go racist? How the app may be redlining communities of color AIID ↗
Through a crowdsourcing social media campaign in 2016, several journalists and researchers demonstrated that augmented reality locations in the popular smartphone game Pokemon Go were more likely to be in white neighborhoods.
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Google Waymo Vehicle and Bus Allegedly Collide in California AIID ↗
On February 14, 2016, a Google autonomous test vehicle partially responsible for a low-speed collision with a bus on El Camino Real in Google’s hometown of Mountain View, CA.
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Arkansas's Opaque Algorithm to Allocate Health Care Excessively Cut Down Hours for Beneficiaries AIID ↗
Beneficiaries of the Arkansas Department of Human Services (DHS)'s Medicaid waiver program were allocated excessively fewer hours of caretaker visit via an algorithm deployed to boost efficiency, which reportedly contained errors and whose outputs varied wildly despite small input changes.
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Amazon Alexa Responding to Environmental Inputs AIID ↗
There are multiple reports of Amazon Alexa products (Echo, Echo Dot) reacting and acting upon unintended stimulus, usually from television commercials or news reporter's voices.
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Predictive Policing Biases of PredPol AIID ↗
Predictive policing algorithms meant to aid law enforcement by predicting future crime show signs of biased output.
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Collection of Robotic Surgery Malfunctions AIID ↗
Study on database reports of robotic surgery malfunctions (8,061), including those ending in injury (1,391) and death (144), between 2000 and 2013.
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Google and Delphi Self-Driving Prototypes Allegedly Involved in Near-Miss on San Antonio Road, Palo Alto AIID ↗
A Delphi self-driving Audi Q5 prototype reportedly aborted a lane change after a Google self-driving Lexus RX400h allegedly cut in front of it on San Antonio Road in Palo Alto, California. According to Delphi executive John Absmeier, the Delphi car "took appropriate action" to avoid collision. No crash or injuries occurred.
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Facebook's 'Tag Suggestions' Allegedly Stored Biometric Data without User Consent AIID ↗
Facebook's initial version of the its Tag Suggestions feature where users were offered suggestions about the identity of people's faces in photos allegedly stored biometric data without consent, violating the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act.
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Images of Black People Labeled as Gorillas AIID ↗
Google Photos image processing software mistakenly labelled a black couple as "gorillas."
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Google’s YouTube Kids App Presents Inappropriate Content AIID ↗
YouTube’s content filtering and recommendation algorithms exposed children to disturbing and inappropriate videos.
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Google's Face Grouping Allegedly Collected and Analyzed Users' Facial Structure without Consent, Violated BIPA AIID ↗
A class-action lawsuit alleged Google failing to provide notice, obtain informed written consent, or publish data retention policies about the collection, storage, and analysis of its face-grouping feature in Google Photos, which violated Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA).
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Gender Biases of Google Image Search AIID ↗
Google Image returns results that under-represent women in leadership roles, notably with the first photo of a female "CEO" being a Barbie doll after 11 rows of male CEOs.
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Oracle's Algorithmic Data Processing System Alleged as Unlawful and Violating Privacy Rights AIID ↗
Oracle's automated system involving algorithmic data processing was alleged in a lawsuit to have been unlawfully collecting personal data from millions of people and violating their privacy rights.
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Employee Automatically Terminated by Computer Program AIID ↗
An employee was laid off, allegedly by an artificially intelligent personnel system, and blocked from access to the building and computer systems without their knowledge.
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Uber Autonomous Cars Running Red Lights AIID ↗
Uber vehicles equipped with technology allowing for autonomous driving running red lights in San Francisco street testing.
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Kronos Scheduling Algorithm Allegedly Caused Financial Issues for Starbucks Employees AIID ↗
Kronos’s scheduling algorithm and its use by Starbucks managers allegedly negatively impacted financial and scheduling stability for Starbucks employees, which disadvantaged wage workers.
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Nest Smoke Alarm Erroneously Stops Alarming AIID ↗
In testing, Google Nest engineers demonstrated that the Nest Wave feature of their Nest Protect: Smoke + CO Alarm could inadvertently silence genuine alarms.
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Sexist and Racist Google Adsense Advertisements AIID ↗
Advertisements chosen by Google Adsense are reported as producing sexist and racist results.
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UT Austin's GRADE Algorithm Reportedly Reduced Review of Lower-Scored PhD Applicants Amid Bias Concerns AIID ↗
From the 2013 through 2019 admissions cycles, UT Austin's Department of Computer Science used GRADE, a statistical machine-learning system trained on past admissions decisions, to score and organize PhD applications. Critics said the system could reproduce historical admissions inequities and reduce attention to lower-scored applicants, while UT Austin said human reviewers still evaluated each file and later discontinued the tool.
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Police Departments Reported ShotSpotter as Unreliable and Wasteful AIID ↗
ShotSpotter algorithmic systems locating gunshots were reported by police departments for containing high false positive rates and wasting police resources, prompting discontinuation.
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New York City Reportedly Released Disputed Value-Added Teacher Ratings for Thousands of Teachers AIID ↗
After a legal dispute over public-records requests, the New York City Department of Education released Teacher Data Reports that used a value-added statistical model to rate thousands of public-school teachers based on estimated student test-score growth. News outlets published the ratings in February 2012, and teachers, unions, and analysts disputed the scores as imprecise and potentially misleading, citing large error margins, limited samples, and apparent roster-linkage errors.
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Major Universities Are Reportedly Using Race as a 'High Impact Predictor' of Student Success AIID ↗
Several major universities are reportedly using a tool that uses race as one factor to predict student success.
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Algorithmic Teacher Evaluation Program Reportedly Failed to Improve Student Outcomes and Was Alleged to Have Harmed Teachers AIID ↗
Gates Foundation-funded Intensive Partnerships for Effective Teaching Initiative's algorithmic program to assess teacher performance reportedly failed to achieve its goals for student outcomes, particularly for minority students, and was criticized for potentially causing harm against teachers.
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Unverified Misreading by Automated Plate Reader Led to Traffic Stop and Restraint of an Innocent Person at Gunpoint in California AIID ↗
In San Francisco, an automated license plate reader (ALPR) camera misread a number as belonging to a stolen vehicle having the wrong make, but its photo was not visually confirmed by the police due to poor quality and allegedly despite multiple chances prior to making a traffic stop, causing an innocent person to be pulled over at gunpoint and restrained in handcuffed.
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IRS Audited Black Taxpayers More Frequently Reportedly Due to Algorithm AIID ↗
The IRS was auditing Black taxpayers more frequently than other groups allegedly due to the design of their algorithms, focusing on easier-to-conduct audits which inadvertently correlated with the group's pattern of tax filing errors.
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Machine Personal Assistants Failed to Maintain Social Norms AIID ↗
During an experiment of software personal assistants at the Information Sciences Institute (ISI) at the University of Southern California (USC), researchers found that the assistants violated the privacy of their principals and were unable to respect the social norms of the office.
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Kidney Testing Method Allegedly Underestimated Risk of Black Patients AIID ↗
Decades-long use of the estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) method to test kidney function which considers race has been criticized by physicians and medical students for its racist history and inaccuracy against Black patients.
Informational only, not legal advice. Verify every claim against the linked official sources and consult qualified counsel before acting.