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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Robot Deployed by Animal Shelter to Patrol Sidewalks outside Its Office, Warding off Homeless People in San Francisco AIID ↗
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) deployed a Knightscope robot to autonomously patrol the area outside its office and ward off homeless people, which was criticized by residents as a tool of intimidation and ordered by the city of San Francisco to stop its use on a public right-of-way.
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Amazon Alexa Plays Loud Music when Owner is Away AIID ↗
An Amazon Alexa, without instruction to do so, began playing loud music in the early morning while the homeowner was away leading to police breaking into their house to turn off the device.
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Las Vegas Self-Driving Bus Involved in Accident AIID ↗
A self-driving public shuttle by Keolis North America and Navya was involved in a collision with a human-driven delivery truck in Las Vegas, Nevada on its first day of service.
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iPhone Face ID Failed to Recognize Users’ Morning Faces AIID ↗
The Face ID feature on iPhone allowing users to unlock their phones via facial recognition was reported by users for not recognizing their faces in the morning.
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Biased Sentiment Analysis AIID ↗
Google Cloud's Natural Language API provided racist, homophobic, amd antisemitic sentiment analyses.
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Facebook translates 'good morning' into 'attack them', leading to arrest AIID ↗
Facebook's automatic language translation software incorrectly translated an Arabic post saying "Good morning" into Hebrew saying "hurt them," leading to the arrest of a Palestinian man in Beitar Illit, Israel.
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Russian Chatbot Supports Stalin and Violence AIID ↗
Yandex, a Russian technology company, released an artificially intelligent chat bot named Alice which began to reply to questions with racist, pro-stalin, and pro-violence responses
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WeChat’s Machine Translation Gave a Racist English Translation for the Chinese Term for “Black Foreigner” AIID ↗
The Chinese platform WeChat provided an inappropriate and racist English translation for the Chinese term for “black foreigner” in its messaging app.
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Google Fined for Changing Shopping Algorithms in EU to Favor Own Service AIID ↗
Google was fined by EU Commission for changing its shopping algorithms in Europe to favor its own comparison service over competitors, resulting in anti-competitive effects.
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Offensive Instagram User Content Displayed as Facebook Ad AIID ↗
An Instagram user’s image containing violent content was reportedly used as advertisement on Facebook allegedly via automated means.
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Amazon Reportedly Recommends Explosive-Producing Ingredients as 'Frequently Bought Together' Items for Chemicals AIID ↗
Amazon was reported to have shown chemical combinations for producing explosives and incendiary devices as "frequently bought together" items via automated recommendation.
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AI-Assisted Body Scanners Reportedly Subjected Transgender Travelers to Invasive Body Searches AIID ↗
Transportation Security Administration (TSA)'s use of image-processing body scanners at airports led transgender and gender-nonconforming travelers to be subjected to allegedly discriminatory and invasive searches, such as being asked to remove undergarments in private rooms by officers not of their gender.
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Identical Twins Can Open Apple FaceID Protected Devices AIID ↗
Apple's iPhone FaceID can be opened by an identical twin of the person who has registered their face to unlock the phone.
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Hackers Break Apple Face ID AIID ↗
Vietnamese security firm Bkav created an improved mask to bypass Apple's Face ID
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Researchers' Homosexual-Men Detection Model Denounced as a Threat to LGBTQ People's Safety and Privacy AIID ↗
Researchers at Stanford Graduate School of Business developed a model that determined, on a binary scale, whether someone was homosexual using only his facial image, which advocacy groups such as GLAAD and the Human Rights Campaign denounced as flawed science and threatening to LGBTQ folks.
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Facial Recognition Trial Performed Poorly at Notting Hill Carnival AIID ↗
The facial recognition trial by London’s Metropolitan Police Service at the Notting Hill Carnival reportedly performed poorly with a high rate of false positives.
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'Jewish Baby Strollers' Provided Antisemitic Google Images, Allegedly Resulting from Hate Speech Campaign AIID ↗
Results for Google Images searches for "Jewish baby strollers" reportedly showed offensive, antisemitic results, allegedly a result of a coordinated hate-speech campaign involving malicious actors on 4chan.
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Chinese Chatbots Question Communist Party AIID ↗
Chatbots on Chinese messaging service expressed anti-China sentiments, causing the messaging service to remove and reprogram the chatbots.
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Tesla Sedan on Autopilot Reportedly Drove Over Dividing Curb in Washington, Resulting in Minor Vehicle Damage AIID ↗
A Tesla Sedan operating on Autopilot mode was not able to center itself on the road and drove over a yellow dividing curb in Redmond, Washington, causing minor damage to the vehicle’s rear suspension.
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UK High Court Found Sky Betting & Gaming Unlawfully Used Automated Profiling and Targeted Marketing to Exploit a Recovering Problem Gambler AIID ↗
In the UK, the High Court found that Sky Betting & Gaming unlawfully used automated profiling and targeted direct marketing to pursue a recovering problem gambler from July 28, 2017 onward without valid consent. Sky reportedly treated him as a high-value customer despite addiction indicators.
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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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AI-Designed Phone Cases Are Unexpected AIID ↗
A third-party Amazon merchant named “my_handy_design” was suspected of using a bot to generate cell phone case designs based on the bizarre and unattractive designs being offered.
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Atlas Robot Fell off Stage at Conference AIID ↗
Boston Dynamics’s autonomous robot Atlas allegedly caught its foot on a stage light, resulting in a fall off the stage at the Congress of Future Science and Technology Leaders conference.
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Airbnb's Trustworthiness Algorithm Allegedly Banned Users without Explanation, and Discriminated against Sex Workers AIID ↗
Airbnb allegedly considered publicly available data on users to gauge their trustworthiness via algorithmic assessment of personality and behavioral traits, resulting in unexplained bans and discriminatory bans against sex workers.
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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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Clearview AI Algorithm Built on Photos Scraped from Social Media Profiles without Consent AIID ↗
Face-matching algorithm by Clearview AI was built using scraped images from social media sites such as Instagram and Facebook without user consent, violating social media site policies, and allegedly privacy regulations.
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High False Positive Rate by SWP's Facial Recognition Use at Champion's League Final AIID ↗
South Wales Police (SWP)’s automated facial recognition (AFR) at the Champion's League Final football game in Cardiff wrongly identified innocent people as potential matches at an extremely high false positive rate of more than 90%.
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BBC Reporter's Twin Brother Cracked HSBC's Voice ID Authentication AIID ↗
HSBC’s voice recognition authentication system was fooled after seven repeated attempts by a BBC reporter's twin brother who mimicked his voice to access his bank account.
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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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Overfit Kaggle Models Discouraged Data Science Competitors AIID ↗
In the “The Nature Conservancy Fisheries Monitoring” competition on the data science competition website Kaggle, a number of competitors overfit their image classifier models to a poorly representative validation data set.
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New York Detective Reportedly Misused Woody Harrelson's Face to Perform Face Recognition Search AIID ↗
When the facial recognition search for a CVS theft suspect's face returned no useful matches due to the surveillance footage being obscured and highly pixelated, a New York City police detective continued the face search using Woody Harrelson's face allegedly due to his resemblance to the suspect's face, eventually leading to the arrest of an unknown victim.
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Facebook Reportedly Outed Sex Workers through Friend Recommendations AIID ↗
Facebook's "People You May Know" feature reportedly outed sex workers by recommending clients to their personal accounts or family members to their business accounts with no option to opt out.
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Gender Biases in Google Translate AIID ↗
A Cornell University study in 2016 highlighted Google Translate's pattern of assigning gender to occupations in a way showing an implicit gender bias against women.
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Pennsylvania County's Family Screening Tool Allegedly Exhibited Discriminatory Effects AIID ↗
Data analysis by the American Civil Liberty Union (ACLU) on Allegheny County's decision-support Family Screening Tool to predict child abuse or neglect risk found the tool resulting in higher screen-in rates for Black families and higher risk scores for households with disabled residents.
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IBM Watson for Oncology Criticized by Customers for Allegedly Unsafe and Inaccurate Cancer Treatment Recommendations AIID ↗
Internal documents from IBM Watson Health showed negative assessments from customers such as Florida’s Jupiter Hospital and Memorial Sloan Kettering criticizing its Watson for Oncology product for allegedly unsafe and incorrect cancer treatment recommendations.
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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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Social Media's Automated Word-Flagging without Context Shifted Content Creators' Language Use AIID ↗
TikTok's, YouTube's, Instagram's, and Twitch's use of algorithms to flag certain words devoid of context changed content creators' use of everyday language or discussion about certain topics in fear of their content getting flagged or auto-demonetized by mistake.
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Uber Locked Indian Drivers out of Accounts Allegedly Due to Facial Recognition Fails AIID ↗
Uber drivers in India reported being locked out of their accounts allegedly due to Real-Time ID Check's facial recognition failing to recognize appearance changes or faces in low lighting conditions.
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AI incident: sexual content (Mar 2017) AIID ↗
A female college student's face was superimposed on another woman's body in deepfake pornographic videos and shared on 4chan allegedly by a male student whose friendship with her fell apart during freshman year.
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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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Wikipedia Vandalism Prevention Bot Loop AIID ↗
Wikipedia bots meant to remove vandalism clash with each other and form feedback loops of repetitve undoing of the other bot's edits.
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Honda's CMBS False Positives Allegedly Caused Accidents to Customers AIID ↗
Honda's Collision Mitigation Braking System (CMBS) allegedly caused accidents to consumers due to frequent instances of false obstacle detection.
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ByteDance Allegedly Trained "For You" Algorithm Using Content Scraped without Consent from Other Social Platforms AIID ↗
ByteDance allegedly scraped short-form videos, usernames, profile pictures, and descriptions of accounts on Instagram, Snapchat, and other sources, and uploaded them without consent on Flipagram, TikTok’s predecessor, in order to improve its “For You” algorithm's performance on American users.
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RealPage's YieldStar Allegedly Facilitated Rent Price Coordination Among Canadian Landlords AIID ↗
RealPage’s YieldStar algorithm is alleged to have enabled Canadian landlords to coordinate rental pricing by utilizing sensitive, non-public market data. The software has been accused of contributing to rent increases in non-rent-controlled units through purported collusion and artificial price inflation. Tenants have reported significant rent hikes, which they attribute to landlords' use of the algorithm.
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PimEyes's Facial Recognition AI Allegedly Lacked Safeguards to Prevent Itself from Being Abused AIID ↗
PimEyes offered its subscription-based AI service to anyone in the public to search for matching facial images across the internet, which critics said lacked public oversight and government rules to prevent itself from misuse such as stalking women.
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Amazon India Allegedly Rigged Search Results to Promote Own Products AIID ↗
Amazon India allegedly copied products and rigged search algorithm to boost its own brands in search ranking, violating antitrust laws.
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AI incident: sexual content (Amazon, Dec 2016) 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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“Amazon’s Choice” Algorithm Failed to Recommend Functional Products and Prone to Review Manipulation AIID ↗
Amazon’s “Amazon’s Choice” algorithm recommended poor-quality defective products and were reportedly susceptible to manipulation by inauthentic reviews.
Informational only, not legal advice. Verify every claim against the linked official sources and consult qualified counsel before acting.
Frequently asked questions
- What is recorded in each incident?
- What happened, when, who was involved as developer or deployer, who was harmed, the sectors and countries affected, and the domain and subdomain the harm falls under. Incidents are mirrored from the AI Incident Database and each links back to its source record.
- Does an incident mean wrongdoing was proven?
- No. These are reported incidents, not findings of liability. Entities named in a report are named as reported, allegations are marked as alleged, and nothing here is a legal determination.
- How current is the incident data?
- It syncs directly from the AI Incident Database several times a day, so a new incident usually appears within hours. Each record carries the date it was last synced, and the snapshot date is shown on the page.
- Does this page include the full incident reports?
- No. The report texts are outside the licence this data is shared under, so only the metadata and the classifications appear here. Every row links to the original incident record, which carries the reports themselves.