{"attribution":{"source":"AI Incident Database (Responsible AI Collaborative)","license":"CC BY-SA 4.0","license_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/","citation":"McGregor, S. (2021). Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21).","snapshot_date":"2026-09-07"},"exported_at":"2026-09-12"}
{"rows":[{"incident_id":1001,"occurred_on":"2025-03-17","title":"LLM Scrapers Allegedly Target Multiple Open Source Projects Disrupting the FOSS Ecosystem","description":"In mid-March 2025, KDE's GitLab infrastructure was reportedly disrupted by aggressive AI web scrapers originating from Alibaba IP ranges. These bots allegedly ignored robots.txt and spoofed browser headers, which in turn purportedly overwhelmed the site and caused outages for developers. Similar incidents reportedly affected other FOSS projects like GNOME, SourceHut, and Fedora. The scraping is allegedly tied to large language model training, and reportedly imposes real costs and delays.","mit_domain":"Socioeconomic & Environmental Harms","mit_subdomain":"Power centralization and unfair distribution of benefits","entity":"AI","intent":"Intentional","timing":"Post-deployment","harm_level":null,"sectors":[],"countries":[],"deployers":["Alibaba, Generative Ai Developers"],"developers":["Alibaba, Generative Ai Developers"],"harmed":["Sysadmins, Sourcehut, Read The Docs, Linux Weekly News, Kde, Inkscape, Gnome, Foss Projects And Communities, Fedora, Diaspora, Curl"],"report_count":2},{"incident_id":435,"occurred_on":"2021-07-04","title":"Coupang Allegedly Tweaked Search Algorithms to Boost Own Products","description":"Coupang was alleged in internal reports tampering its search algorithms to prioritize exposure of its own products, which potentially violated Korea's Fair Trade Act.","mit_domain":"Socioeconomic & Environmental Harms","mit_subdomain":"Power centralization and unfair distribution of benefits","entity":"Human","intent":"Intentional","timing":"Post-deployment","harm_level":"AI tangible harm event","sectors":["wholesale and retail trade"],"countries":["KR"],"deployers":["Coupang"],"developers":["Coupang"],"harmed":["Coupang Suppliers, Coupang Customers"],"report_count":4},{"incident_id":251,"occurred_on":"2018-08-01","title":"Amazon Allegedly Tweaked Search Algorithm to Boost Its Own Products","description":"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.","mit_domain":"Socioeconomic & Environmental Harms","mit_subdomain":"Power centralization and unfair distribution of benefits","entity":"AI","intent":"Intentional","timing":"Post-deployment","harm_level":null,"sectors":[],"countries":[],"deployers":["Amazon"],"developers":["Amazon"],"harmed":["Small Businesses On Amazon, Amazon Customers"],"report_count":3},{"incident_id":403,"occurred_on":"2018-01-15","title":"Gmail’s Inbox Sorting System Reportedly Reduced Visibility of Political Emails and Campaign Calls-to-Action","description":"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.","mit_domain":"Socioeconomic & Environmental Harms","mit_subdomain":"Power centralization and unfair distribution of benefits","entity":"AI","intent":"Unintentional","timing":"Post-deployment","harm_level":null,"sectors":[],"countries":[],"deployers":["Google"],"developers":["Google"],"harmed":["Political Organizations, Political Candidates"],"report_count":2},{"incident_id":370,"occurred_on":"2017-09-27","title":"Google Fined for Changing Shopping Algorithms in EU to Favor Own Service","description":"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.","mit_domain":"Socioeconomic & Environmental Harms","mit_subdomain":"Power centralization and unfair distribution of benefits","entity":"AI","intent":"Intentional","timing":"Post-deployment","harm_level":null,"sectors":[],"countries":[],"deployers":["Google"],"developers":["Google"],"harmed":["Google'S Competitor Shopping Services"],"report_count":1},{"incident_id":437,"occurred_on":"2016-12-31","title":"Amazon India Allegedly Rigged Search Results to Promote Own Products","description":"Amazon India allegedly copied products and rigged search algorithm to boost its own brands in search ranking, violating antitrust laws.","mit_domain":"Socioeconomic & Environmental Harms","mit_subdomain":"Power centralization and unfair distribution of benefits","entity":"AI","intent":"Intentional","timing":"Post-deployment","harm_level":null,"sectors":[],"countries":[],"deployers":["Amazon India"],"developers":["Amazon India"],"harmed":["Small Businesses In India, Amazon Customers In India"],"report_count":4}]}