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.
Self-reported incidents, a person’s own public post or an account given to us, are listed but locked; subscribers open each one with credits. Reports filed through this site are listed only with the reporter’s agreement.
Press reportingSelf-reported: a person’s own public post · 10 creditsSelf-reported: told to us directly · 25 credits
A class action lawsuit alleges that TikTok, Inc. collected and used personal data from users without proper consent. The plaintiffs have filed a motion for preliminary approval of a settlement. The case is pending in the Northern District of Illinois.
Teleperformance, a global call centre company, told some staff it would install AI-powered webcams to monitor home-working infractions such as eating, phone use, or leaving desks. The system would randomly scan for breaches and send alerts to managers. After the Guardian inquired, the company said the remote scans would not be used in the UK, but the plan raised concerns from unions and MPs about invasive surveillance.
Jinan city traffic authority cancelled a fine issued to a driver after an AI traffic camera mistook him scratching his face for using a mobile phone. The man, surnamed Liu, was told he had violated road rules while driving and was ordered to pay 50 yuan and receive two penalty points. He said no one would help him over the phone, but the authority later rescinded the ticket, explaining that the surveillance system automatically detects motorists' movements and takes photographs.
Pa Edrissa Manjang, an UberEats driver, was dismissed after Uber's facial recognition system failed to recognize him. He alleges racial discrimination and harassment. Uber attempted to have the claim struck out, but the East London Employment Tribunal refused. Uber later reinstated Manjang, and the case continues.
Spain's Inter-professional Iberian Pig Association is asking for jamón ibérico to be excluded from the Nutri-Score food labelling scheme, which rates it D or E. The association says the algorithm fails to take account of the nutritional value of Iberian pork, including protein, B vitamins and minerals. Spain's agriculture minister has expressed concern; the consumer affairs ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
A Tesla operating on Autopilot or Full Self-Driving software halted on a busy highway, leading to a rear-end collision with an F-350 truck that killed the driver. The crash report confirmed the automated driving system was engaged during the lethal collision. The incident is under investigation.
A 94-year-old woman with limited mobility was lifted by relatives to complete facial recognition while activating her social security card at an Agricultural Bank of China branch in Guangshui, Hubei. A video of the incident circulated online and sparked criticism. The bank issued a statement apologising and saying the episode showed that its service awareness and publicity were inadequate.
Police are investigating a Tesla Model X crash in Yongsan, Seoul, that killed the car owner and injured the driver and an apartment employee. The driver testified that he suddenly lost control as the car drove into a wall and caught fire. A court warrant has allowed forensic examination of the vehicle. Tesla has denied that its vehicles have acceleration malfunctions.
Researchers from McAfee Labs demonstrated that a two-inch piece of black electrical tape stuck on a 35 mph speed limit sign can cause the Traffic Aware Cruise Control in older Tesla Model S and X vehicles to misread the sign as 85 mph and automatically accelerate. The vulnerability affects vehicles using the MobilEye EyeQ3 camera system (Hardware Pack 1). The driver can override by braking. Tesla and MobilEye were informed but did not commit to fixing the issue.
Researchers at Ben-Gurion University demonstrated that Tesla's Autopilot could be tricked into stopping for a split-second phantom stop sign displayed on a digital billboard. The system falsely detected the depthless object and applied the brakes in the middle of the road. The researchers disclosed their findings to Tesla and Mobileye. No actual accident occurred during the test.
Lauren Rosenberg alleges that Google Maps provided walking directions that led her onto a busy road without sidewalks in Park City, Utah, where she was struck by a motorist and suffered severe injuries. She filed a lawsuit against Google Inc. in U.S. District Court in Utah, seeking over $100,000 in damages. The mobile version of Google Maps did not display a safety warning that was present on the computer version.
Allstate proposed an auto insurance rate adjustment plan in Maryland using a retention model algorithm that varied premium changes based on existing premiums. The algorithm would have increased rates up to 20% for customers already paying the highest premiums while capping increases at 5% for others, and would have denied meaningful discounts to thousands owed reductions. The Maryland Insurance Administration rejected the plan as discriminatory, but Allstate claims it was withdrawn and has continued proposing similar models elsewhere. The proposal never took effect in Maryland.
The FindFace facial recognition app is being used by users of the Russian website Dvach to identify porn actresses and sex workers from images and match them to their VKontakte accounts. The users then spam the victims' families and friends with the information, aiming to out them. Several victims complained to FindFace, but the founder stated there was no way to prevent the misuse.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) filed a complaint with the District of Columbia attorney general against five exam proctoring companies—Respondus, ProctorU, Proctorio, Examity, and Honorlock—alleging unfair and deceptive business practices. The companies are accused of using opaque AI algorithms to flag cheating and collecting excessive biometric data from students. Students have reported that the facial recognition software fails to detect dark skin tones, preventing them from taking exams. EPIC has also sent demand letters threatening civil suits if the companies do not stop their practices.
An 18-year-old driver, Sergey Ustinov, froze to death in Siberia after Google Maps directed him onto a disused shortcut on the Road of Bones. His friend Vladislav Istomin was rescued with severe hypothermia and frostbite. The pair had followed Google Maps' shorter route instead of the main highway, and their car was damaged by a wooden spike. The incident is under investigation by Russian authorities.
ScaleFactor, an Austin-based startup, is reported to have failed to deliver the automated, real-time bookkeeping tools it promised customers, instead relying on human bookkeepers and a Filipino contract accounting firm. The company told Forbes in June that it was shutting down, initially blaming the pandemic, but Forbes later reported that its problems predated Covid-19. Investors reportedly came to see the company as more of a services business than a software platform, and pulled funding after a pivot to a marketplace model. No legal or regulatory action is reported.
Over 10 homeowners in Guangxi, China, were defrauded by a real estate agent who used the government's '邕e登' app to transfer their property without consent. The agent tricked them into using facial recognition for what they thought was file checking, but instead the system processed property transfers. The agent has been arrested and the case is under investigation. The local government has restricted the properties and plans to upgrade the app's security.
Barclays introduced a pilot of employee monitoring software from Sapience in its product control department at Canary Wharf. The system monitors computer activity and admonishes staff if they are not deemed active enough, recording breaks as "unaccounted activity". Employees reported significant stress and worry about taking breaks. Barclays acknowledged the pilot and said it would listen to feedback.
Inflection, a background check company used by Airbnb, Uber, and other platforms, has been sued multiple times for providing inaccurate reports. The lawsuits allege that Inflection's name-only matching and outdated data caused people to be wrongly banned from Airbnb and denied jobs and housing. Some cases have been settled, while others remain ongoing. The company is accused of violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
Clearview AI, the facial recognition company that scraped billions of photos from social media, developed a surveillance camera system under the name Insight Camera. The system was tested by the United Federation of Teachers and Rudin Management in New York City. The UFT used it to identify individuals who had made threats and prevent them from entering its offices. Clearview did not respond to requests for comment.
Liam Porr, a college student at UC Berkeley, used OpenAI's GPT-3 language model to generate a fake blog under a fake name. One of the posts reached the number-one spot on Hacker News, fooling tens of thousands of readers. Porr later confessed and retired the blog after two weeks. The experiment demonstrated the ease of creating convincing AI-generated content.
Harrisburg University researchers claimed their facial recognition software could predict criminality from a photo, intended to help law enforcement prevent crime. Over 1,700 academics signed an open letter demanding the research remain unpublished, citing unsound scientific premises and racial bias. The paper was rejected by a Springer conference after peer review. The university removed its press release and said the paper was being updated to address concerns.
In a healthcare test conducted by medical AI firm NABLA, OpenAI's GPT-3 language model recommended that a mock patient kill themselves. The test highlighted GPT-3's inability to reason or understand context, despite generating coherent text. Yann LeCun, Facebook's chief AI scientist, criticized the algorithm's unrealistic expectations.
ProctorU, an online proctoring service, sent a legal threat letter to the University of California Santa Barbara faculty association after the association expressed concerns about ProctorU's data privacy policies. The letter, from ProctorU's lawyer, invoked defamation, copyright, and trademark claims, and was copied to state and federal prosecutors. The faculty association had asked the university to reconsider its relationship with ProctorU due to concerns about student data sharing.
Each incident is written from the reporting or the account it cites. A report is an allegation, not a finding.
