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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Warehouse robot ruptures can of bear spray and injures workers AIID ↗
Twenty-four Amazon workers in New Jersey were hospitalized after a robot punctured a can of bear repellent spray in a warehouse.
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Tumblr Automated Pornography-Detecting Algorithms Erroneously Flagged Inoffensive Images as Explicit AIID ↗
Tumblr’s automated tools to identify adult content were reported to have incorrectly flagged inoffensive images as explicit, following its announcement to ban all adult content on the platform.
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Facial Recognition Pilot in Bahia Reportedly Targeted Black and Poor People AIID ↗
Facial recognition deployed in a pilot project by the local government of Bahia despite having minimal hit rate reportedly targeted Black and poor people disproportionately.
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Sleeping Driver on Tesla AutoPilot AIID ↗
A Tesla Model S remained on autopilot while being operated by a drunk, sleeping operator whose hands were not on the wheel. The police had to slow the car down by slowing in front of the vehicle to activate its 'driver assist' feature .
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Schufa Credit Scoring in Germany Reported for Unreliable and Imbalanced Scores AIID ↗
Creditworthiness Schufa scores in Germany reportedly privileged older and female consumers, and people who changed addresses less frequently, and were unreliable depending on scoring version.
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Reported Automated License Plate Reader Alert on Previously Stolen Rental Car Leads to Alleged Wrongful Detainment in California AIID ↗
A purportedly automated license plate reader allegedly flagged a rental car in California as stolen, although reports indicate it had already been recovered. Police reportedly conducted a high-risk stop and detained the occupants at gunpoint before confirming their innocence. The driver later alleged excessive force and database errors in a federal lawsuit.
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Emotion Detection Models Showed Disparate Performance along Racial Lines AIID ↗
Emotion detection tools by Face++ and Microsoft's Face API allegedly scored smiling or defaulted ambiguous facial photos for Black faces as negative emotion more often than for white faces.
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Wrongful Attempted Arrest for Apple Store Thefts Due to NYPD’s Facial Misidentification AIID ↗
New York Police Department (NYPD)’s facial recognition system falsely connected a Black teenager to a series of thefts at Apple stores, which resulted in his wrongful attempted arrest.
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Picture of Woman on Side of Bus Shamed for Jaywalking AIID ↗
Facial recognition system in China mistakes celebrity's face on moving billboard for jaywalker
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Crashes with Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) AIID ↗
A Boeing 737 crashed into the sea, killing 189 people, after faulty sensor data caused an automated manuevering system to repeatedly push the plane's nose downward.
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Oregon’s Screening Tool for Child Abuse Cases Discontinued Following Concerns of Racial Bias AIID ↗
Oregon’s Department of Human Services (DHS) stopped using its Safety at Screening Tool, that is aimed to predict the risk that children wind up in foster care or be investigated in the future, and opted for a new process allegedly to reduce disparities and improve racially equitable decision-making.
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Facebook "News Feed" Allegedly Boosted Misinformation and Violating Content Following Use of MSI Metric AIID ↗
After the “News Feed” algorithm had been overhauled to boost engagement between friends and family in early 2018, its heavy weighting of re-shared content was alleged found by company researchers to have pushed content creators to reorient their posts towards outrage and sensationalism, causing a proliferation of misinformation, toxicity, and violent content.
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Dutch Families Wrongfully Accused of Tax Fraud Due to Discriminatory Algorithm AIID ↗
A childcare benefits system in the Netherlands falsely accused thousands of families of fraud, in part due to an algorithm that treated having a second nationality as a risk factor.
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Facebook Allegedly Failed to Police Anti-Rohingya Hate Speech Content That Contributed to Violence in Myanmar AIID ↗
Facebook allegedly did not adequately remove anti-Rohingya hate speech, some of which was extremely violent and dehumanizing, on its platform, contributing to the violence faced by Rohingya communities in Myanmar.
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HUD charges Facebook with enabling housing discrimination AIID ↗
In March 2019 the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development charged Facebook with violating the Fair Housing Act by allowing real estate sellers to target advertisements in a discriminatory manner.
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Amazon Allegedly Tweaked Search Algorithm to Boost Its Own Products AIID ↗
Amazon tweaked product-search algorithm to boost and guide customers towards more profitable in-house products instead of showing mainly most-relevant and best-selling listings, which its internal engineers and lawyers alleged to violate company’s best-for-customer principle.
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Amazon's Rekognition Falsely Matched Members of Congress to Mugshots AIID ↗
Rekognition's face comparison feature was shown by the ACLU to have misidentified members of congress, and particularly members of colors, as other people who have been arrested using a mugshot database built on publicly available arrest photos.
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Swedish Contraceptive App, Natural Cycles, Allegedly Failed to Correctly Map Menstrual Cycle AIID ↗
Some women using the contraceptive app, Natural Cycles, reported unwanted pregnancies, revealing its algorithm's difficulties in mapping menstrual cycles.
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Chinese Tech Firms Allegedly Developed Facial Recognition to Identify People by Race, Targeting Uyghur Muslims AIID ↗
Various Chinese firms were revealed by patent applications to have developed facial recognition capable of detecting people by race, which critics feared would enable persecution and discrimination of Uyghur Muslims.
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Uber Allegedly Wrongfully Accused Drivers of Fraud via Automated Systems AIID ↗
Uber was alleged in a lawsuit to have wrongfully accused its drivers in the UK and Portugal of fraudulent activity through automated systems, which resulted in their dismissal without a right to appeal.
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Transgender Uber Drivers Mistakenly Kicked off App for Appearance Change during Gender Transitions AIID ↗
Transgender Uber drivers reported being automatically deactivated from the app due to Real-Time ID Check failing to account for difference in appearance of people undergoing gender transitions.
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Facebook’s Automated Content Moderation Tool Flagged a Post Containing Parts of the Declaration of Independence as Hate Speech by Mistake AIID ↗
Facebook’s content moderation algorithm was acknowledged by the company to have flagged excerpts of the Declaration of Independence posted by a small newspaper in Texas as hate speech by mistake.
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Atlantic City Casino-Hotels Allegedly Used Cendyn's Rainmaker AI to Coordinate and Inflate Room Rates AIID ↗
Atlantic City casino-hotels were alleged to have used Cendyn's Rainmaker AI-powered pricing platform to coordinate room rates using competitors' non-public pricing and occupancy data. Plaintiffs alleged that the hotels accepted Rainmaker's recommendations about 90% of the time, resulting in anti-competitively high room prices for guests.
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OpenAI's Training Data for LLMs Allegedly Comprised of Copyrighted Books AIID ↗
Two authors alleged in a class action lawsuit OpenAI infringed authors' copyrights by incorporating illegal "shadow libraries" offering copyrighted books without permission in the training data of its generative LLMs, such as ChatGPT.
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Two Cruise Autonomous Vehicles Collided with Each Other in California AIID ↗
In San Francisco, an autonomous Cruise Chevrolet Bolt collided with another Cruise vehicle driven by a Cruise human employee, causing minor scuffs to the cars but no human injuries.
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Calgary Malls Reportedly Deployed Facial Recognition Without Customer Consent AIID ↗
Facial recognition (FRT) was reportedly deployed in some Calgary-area malls to approximate customer age and gender without explicit consent, which a privacy expert warned was a cause for concern.
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Tesla on Autopilot Crashed into Parked Police Car in California AIID ↗
A Tesla sedan on Autopilot mode collided with a parked Laguna Beach Police Department car, resulting in minor injuries for its driver in Laguna Beach, California.
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Tesla Autopilot Allegedly Malfunctioned in a Non-Fatal Collision in Greece AIID ↗
Autopilot was alleged by its Tesla Model 3 driver to have unexpectedly malfunctioned, veering right without warning and crashing into a road divider near Thessaloniki, Greece, which resulted in damages to its wheel and door but no injury to the driver.
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Amazon Echo Mistakenly Recorded and Sent Private Conversation to Random Contact AIID ↗
Amazon Echo misinterpreted a background conversation between a husband and wife as instructions for recording a message and sending it to one of the husband's employees.
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Amazon Allegedly Violated Children's Privacy through Default Voice Collection Settings AIID ↗
Amazon's retention of children' voice recordings indefinitely as the default setting reportedly to train Alexa's voice recognition for Alexa-enabled devices was charged by the FTC and DOJ to violate COPPA Rule.
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Facebook’s Automated Removal of Content Featuring Nudity-Containing Artworks Denounced as Censorship AIID ↗
Facebook’s removal of posts featuring renowned artworks by many historical artists and their promotional content due to nudity via both automated and human-moderated means were condemned by critics, such as museums and tourism boards, as cultural censorship and prevention of artwork promotion.
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Tesla Model X on Autopilot Missed Parked Vehicles and Pedestrians, Killing Motorcyclist in Japan AIID ↗
A Tesla Model X operated on Autopilot reportedly failed to recognize the parked motorcycles, pedestrians, and van in its path in Kanagawa, Japan, and ran over a motorcyclist who previously stopped when a member of his motorcyclist group was involved in an accident.
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Content Using Bestiality Thumbnails Allegedly Evaded YouTube’s Thumbnail Monitoring System AIID ↗
YouTube’s thumbnail monitoring system was allegedly evaded by content farms such as ones in Cambodia who spike viewership and generate ad revenue using bestiality-themed thumbnails.
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Investigative Journalist Rana Ayyub Targeted by AI-Generated Deepfake Pornography AIID ↗
Investigative journalist Rana Ayyub was targeted by a deepfake porn campaign, where AI-generated explicit content falsely depicted her in a pornographic video. This was part of a broader effort to discredit and silence her, which included a doxxing attack that exposed her personal information that resulted in severe harassment and emotional distress.
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Facial Recognition Program in São Paulo Metro Stations Suspended for Illegal and Disproportionate Violation of Citizens' Right to Privacy AIID ↗
A facial recognition program rolled out by São Paulo Metro Stations was suspended following a court ruling in response to a lawsuit by civil society organizations, who cited fear of it being integrated with other electronic surveillance entities without consent, and lack of transparency about the biometric data collection process of metro users.
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Argentinian City Government Deployed Teenage-Pregnancy Predictive Algorithm Using Invasive Demographic Data AIID ↗
In 2018, during the abortion-decriminalization debate in Argentina, the Salta city government deployed a teenage-pregnancy predictive algorithm built by Microsoft that allegedly lacked a defined purpose, explicitly considered sensitive information such as disability and whether their home had access to hot water.
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All Image Captions Produced are Violent AIID ↗
MIT Media Lab researchers create AI-powered "psychopath" named Norman by training a model on "dark corners" of Reddit.
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Tesla Model X on Autopilot Crashed into California Highway Barrier, Killing Driver AIID ↗
A Tesla Model X P100D operating on Autopilot's Traffic-Aware Cruise Control (TACC) and Autosteer system allegedly accelerated above the speed limit of a highway in Mountain View, California, and steered itself directly into a barrier, resulting in its driver’s death.
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Uber AV Killed Pedestrian in Arizona AIID ↗
An Uber autonomous vehicle (AV) in autonomous mode struck and killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona.
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Man Arrested For Sock Theft by False Facial Match Despite Alibi AIID ↗
A man was arrested for theft of socks from a TJ Maxx store under the guise of an eyewitness ID case, after the local police asked the store's security guard to confirm the facial recognition match produced using surveillance footage, despite him having an alibi at the time of the theft.
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Australian Telco’s Incident Management Bot Excessively Sent Technicians in the Field by Mistake, Allegedly Costing Millions AIID ↗
In early 2018, an Australian telecommunications company’s incident management AI excessively deployed technicians into the field, and was allegedly unable to be stopped by the automation team.
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Google Photo Merge Decapitates Subject AIID ↗
Google Photos' AI Assistant created a strange hybrid photograph when merging three different pictures from a ski trip.
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Tesla on Autopilot Collided with Parked Fire Truck on California Freeway AIID ↗
A Tesla Model S operating on Autopilot mode crashed into the back of a parked fire truck on a freeway in Culver City, California in a non-fatal collision.
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Customer Service Robot Scares Away Customers AIID ↗
Heriot-Watt Univeristy in Scotland developed an artificially intelligent grocery store robot, Fabio, who provided unhelpful answers to customer's questions and "scared away" multiple customers, according to the grocery store Margiotta.
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Gmail’s Inbox Sorting System Reportedly Reduced Visibility of Political Emails and Campaign Calls-to-Action AIID ↗
Google's Gmail inbox sorting algorithm for political emails was reported by presidential candidates, nonprofits, and advocacy groups for having negative impact on call-to-actions, allegedly suppressing donations and impeding political actions.
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Waze App Allegedly Caused Tourists’ Car to End up in Lake Champlain, Vermont AIID ↗
The tourists driving through Vermont blamed Waze for directing them into a boat launch in Lake Champlain, prompting the vehicle to slide into the water by the time the drivers realized their location in the dark and foggy weather.
Informational only, not legal advice. Verify every claim against the linked official sources and consult qualified counsel before acting.