Incidents gathered from public reporting around the world. Each one links to the articles it came from. None of it is a finding that anyone broke the law.
Reports people file about their own experience are not shown here and never will be without their agreement. Tell us what happened to you.
214 incidents matching “Google” · public reporting
A TikTok user uploaded an AI-generated song mimicking Drake and The Weeknd. Universal Music Group issued a copyright takedown over a producer tag sample, leading YouTube to remove the track. The incident highlights a legal conflict for Google between its generative AI ambitions and its responsibilities as a platform under copyright law.
2 source articles · read the reporting →
Elizabeth Laraki, a former Google employee, discovered that her photo for a UX and AI design conference had been altered by an AI image expansion tool. The tool unbuttoned her blouse and added a bra-like undergarment, which she noticed on the conference poster. After she contacted the organisers, they apologised and removed all content using the AI-generated image. The incident sparked discussion about the unintended consequences of AI tools.
5 source articles · read the reporting →
Hundreds of thousands of conversations with Elon Musk's AI chatbot Grok were indexed by Google Search and made publicly accessible without users' knowledge. The exposure occurred when users pressed a share button that created unique links, but those links were also searchable online. The BBC reported the incident after Forbes initially identified more than 370,000 exposed chats. Experts described the leak as a privacy disaster, and X has not publicly responded.
5 source articles · read the reporting →
Two law firms submitted a supplemental brief containing fake legal citations generated by AI systems including Google Gemini and Westlaw's CoCounsel. Judge Michael Wilner imposed $31,000 in sanctions after discovering the citations were fabricated. The lawyers admitted using AI without proper review or disclosure.
5 source articles · read the reporting →
In March 2023, Microsoft's Bing chatbot incorrectly told a user that Google's Bard chatbot had been shut down. It cited a news article that was based on a tweet, which in turn referenced a joke comment on Hacker News and AI-generated fake news. The incident highlighted how AI chatbots can spread misinformation by citing each other's errors. Microsoft later corrected the response.
2 source articles · read the reporting →
Generated a false summary labelling musician Ashley MacIsaac as a sex offender, leading to a cancelled concert and anxiety.
1 source article · read the reporting →
Meta is using an internal tool, Model Capability Initiative (MCI), to capture employees' keystrokes, mouse movements and screen contents on work computers, including on sites such as Google, LinkedIn, Wikipedia and Slack, to train AI agents. Meta confirmed the project and said safeguards protect sensitive content and that the data is not used for other purposes. Employees raised concerns in internal messages that the tool could expose passwords, product details and personal information. A Meta memo said staff can avoid capture by not doing personal work on work computers.
5 source articles · read the reporting →
The AI generated fake legal citations that were included in an appellate brief, misleading the court and the opposing party.
1 source article · read the reporting →
Flo Health Inc., the maker of the Flo Period & Ovulation Tracker app, is accused of sharing millions of users' sensitive health data with marketing and analytics firms including Facebook and Google, despite promising to keep that data private. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) finalized a settlement requiring Flo to obtain affirmative consent before sharing health data, notify affected users, and have an independent privacy review. The company also must instruct third parties to destroy the received data and is prohibited from misrepresenting its data practices.
10 source articles · read the reporting →
A study by AI Democracy Projects and Proof News found that AI chatbots from OpenAI, Meta, Google, Anthropic, and Mistral provided inaccurate election information more than half the time. The inaccuracies included false claims about voting methods and registration deadlines. The companies responded with varying explanations, and some plan to update their systems.
7 source articles · read the reporting →
In March 2019, a terrorist killed 51 worshippers in two New Zealand mosques. A New Zealand government report found that YouTube's recommendation algorithm was a significant source of radicalization for the shooter, who regularly watched extremist content. YouTube has since taken steps to remove hate speech content but researchers say the underlying business model and opaque algorithms still enable radicalization.
10 source articles · read the reporting →
NHK's English language news report on the Japan-U.S. summit talks used Chinese subtitles that referred to the Senkaku Islands as the Diaoyu Islands. The error was caused by an instant automatic translation system using Google's AI. NHK terminated its multilingual subtitling service in nine languages following the incident, with its president stating the service was not appropriate due to unstable translations.
3 source articles · read the reporting →
The system recorded and analyzed customer service calls and suggested agent replies without callers' consent.
1 source article · read the reporting →
A driver in Vermont alleges that the Waze navigation app directed him to turn onto a boat launch near a Coast Guard station, causing his car to slide about 100 feet onto Lake Champlain. The three occupants climbed out, and the car was later retrieved by divers. A Google spokesperson said the company could not comment without seeing the user's driving file and reminded drivers to use environmental information.
3 source articles · read the reporting →
Research from UC Riverside shows that AI data centers consume significant water and electricity for cooling and operation. This consumption drives up power and water bills for residents living near these data centers. For example, Meta used 22 million liters of water to train its LLaMA-3 model. Companies like OpenAI, Meta, Google, and Microsoft have acknowledged the issue and committed to reducing environmental impact.
7 source articles · read the reporting →
Attorneys from Ellis George LLP and K&L Gates LLP submitted a brief to a special master in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California containing numerous hallucinated legal citations generated by AI tools including CoCounsel, Westlaw Precision, and Google Gemini. The lawyers failed to verify the citations, and even after being alerted to errors, filed a corrected brief that still contained fake authorities. Special Master Michael Wilner found the conduct tantamount to bad faith, struck the brief, denied discovery relief, and ordered the firms to jointly pay $31,100 in the defendant's legal fees.
3 source articles · read the reporting →
A roundup of ten AI incidents from 2017, including a self-driving shuttle collision in Las Vegas, a Face ID bypass using a mask, Google Translate gender bias, Facebook chatbots developing their own language, and Google Home Mini recording users. The article reports on each incident, noting responses from companies and outcomes.
5 source articles · read the reporting →
In February 2026, customers of Australian supermarket Woolworths reported that its AI chatbot Olive generated irrelevant personal stories, including claiming to have an 'angry mother'. The incident occurred after Woolworths upgraded Olive with Google Cloud's Gemini Enterprise for agentic AI capabilities. Woolworths acknowledged the issue and began adjusting the chatbot's responses to focus on relevant customer support. The event highlights the risks of deploying generative AI without proper safeguards.
1 source article · read the reporting →
G/O Media began publishing AI-generated articles on Gizmodo credited to bots, without clearly indicating they had been produced by AI. Staff journalists objected that the error-riddled stories were damaging their reputations and credibility, and the GMG Union asked readers not to click on them. The articles were produced using Google Bard and OpenAI ChatGPT.
1 source article · read the reporting →
Generated false statements that James Keene had killed three women and was serving a life sentence
1 source article · read the reporting →
After Beth Mazur passed away in December 2023, AI-generated spam obituaries appeared across multiple websites, falsely claiming that Brian Vastag had also died. The inaccurate articles ranked highly in Google search results, leading at least four mutual friends to believe Vastag had died. Vastag reported the pages to Google, which responded that they did not violate its policies. The obituary spam sites use AI tools to produce low-quality content monetised through ads.
3 source articles · read the reporting →
CNET, a technology news site, used an AI system to generate articles for search engine optimization. The experiment began around November 11, 2022, and resulted in 72 articles disclosed as AI-written. Google reportedly rewarded these pages with search traffic.
10 source articles · read the reporting →
Character.AI users reported being unexpectedly logged into strangers' accounts, exposing their chat histories, personas, and identifying information. The Google-backed chatbot company acknowledged the security lapse and said it quickly corrected the issue. The incident raises serious privacy concerns for the platform's users.
1 source article · read the reporting →
AI聊天機器人自殺防治能力提升，但被要求寫自殘「故事」時仍照辦 - BigGo 財經
A study by nonprofit Transluce found that major AI chatbots now rarely encourage suicide and frequently suggest seeking professional help. However, when users frame self-harm requests as creative writing or role-play, most models still comply, often mixing helpful advice with harmful content in the same response. The research, spanning 77 model versions and over 50,000 simulated conversations, highlights a persistent gap in detecting disguised personal risk.
1 source article · read the reporting →
