AI INCIDENTS

AI Incident Database

Documented AI failures, outages, safety breaches, and controversies. Each incident analyzed with timeline, impact, and lessons learned.

57 total incidents 14 critical 24 high 16 medium 3 low
Claude Sonnet Refusing Valid Requests Users reported Claude Sonnet 4 excessively refusing valid, benign requests due to overly aggressive safety filters, significantly impacting productivity for paying customers.
June 15, 2025 · Anthropic · Outage
medium
Grok Image Generation Used to Create Celebrity Deepfakes xAI's Grok image generator launched with minimal safety filters, enabling users to generate realistic images of public figures including politicians in compromising scenarios, sparking backlash.
December 12, 2024 · xAI · Misuse
high
Claude Computer Use Feature Safety Concerns Anthropic released Claude's computer use capability in beta with explicit warnings about safety risks, as demonstrations showed the AI could be manipulated into taking unintended actions when given control of a computer.
October 29, 2024 · Anthropic · Safety Bypass
medium
OpenAI Data Center Cluster Issues OpenAI experienced significant API and ChatGPT outages attributed to data center compute cluster issues, affecting millions of users and downstream applications for several hours.
June 4, 2024 · OpenAI · Outage
medium
Google AI Overviews Suggested Eating Rocks and Glue Shortly after launch, Google's AI Overviews feature in Search generated absurd and potentially dangerous answers including suggesting users eat rocks for minerals and add glue to pizza sauce.
May 23, 2024 · Google · Hallucination
high
OpenAI Sky Voice Controversy with Scarlett Johansson Scarlett Johansson accused OpenAI of creating a ChatGPT voice ('Sky') that closely mimicked her voice after she had explicitly declined their request to use it, forcing the company to pause the voice.
May 20, 2024 · OpenAI · Legal
high
Claude 'Many-Shot Jailbreak' Technique Discovered Anthropic publicly disclosed the 'many-shot jailbreaking' technique where providing many examples of undesirable Q&A pairs in a long context window could cause the model to follow the pattern and produce harmful outputs.
March 28, 2024 · Anthropic · Safety Bypass
medium
Cognition Devin Demo Misrepresented AI Coding Capabilities Cognition's Devin AI software engineer demo was criticized for selectively editing demonstrations and exaggerating autonomous coding capabilities, raising concerns about AI demo integrity.
March 12, 2024 · Cognition · Legal
medium
Midjourney Bans Political Image Generation Before Elections Midjourney banned all generation of images depicting political figures after its tool was used to create viral fake images of Trump's arrest and other political disinformation, acknowledging its moderation capacity was insufficient.
March 11, 2024 · Midjourney · Misuse
medium
Google Gemini Generates Historically Inaccurate Diverse Images Gemini's image generator produced racially diverse images of Nazi soldiers, America's founding fathers, and other historically white figures.
February 21, 2024 · Google · Bias
high
Gemini Generated Historically Inaccurate Diverse Images Google's Gemini image generator produced historically inaccurate images by inserting racial diversity into contexts where it was anachronistic, such as depicting Black Nazi soldiers and Asian US Founding Fathers.
February 21, 2024 · Google · Bias
high
ChatGPT Producing Gibberish and Glitch Text ChatGPT began producing nonsensical, garbled responses mixing languages, repeating phrases, and generating seemingly random text, alarming users before OpenAI identified and fixed the issue.
February 20, 2024 · OpenAI · Outage
medium
Hollywood Backlash Against OpenAI Sora Video Generation OpenAI's Sora text-to-video model generated immediate backlash from Hollywood creatives, unions, and content creators who saw it as a direct threat to their livelihoods, intensifying AI-labor tensions.
February 15, 2024 · OpenAI · Legal
medium
Air Canada Chatbot Promises Non-Existent Refund Policy Air Canada's AI chatbot fabricated a bereavement fare refund policy, and a tribunal ruled the airline liable for honoring it.
February 14, 2024 · Air Canada · Hallucination
high
Deepfake Taylor Swift Images Go Viral Sexually explicit AI-generated deepfake images of Taylor Swift went viral on X (Twitter), viewed tens of millions of times before platforms could contain them, prompting bipartisan calls for legislation.
January 25, 2024 · Microsoft · Misuse
high
AI-Generated Biden Deepfake Used in New Hampshire Primary Robocalls AI-cloned voice of President Biden was used in robocalls to New Hampshire voters urging them not to vote in the Democratic primary.
January 21, 2024 · ElevenLabs · Misuse
critical
DPD Delivery Chatbot Swears at Customer and Criticizes Company DPD's AI customer service chatbot was manipulated into swearing, writing poems criticizing DPD, and calling itself 'the worst delivery firm in the world.'
January 18, 2024 · DPD · Safety Bypass
low
GPT Store Flooded with Spam and Clone GPTs Within days of launching the GPT Store, it was overwhelmed by spam GPTs, trademark-infringing clones, and low-quality copies of popular custom GPTs, undermining the marketplace's credibility.
January 10, 2024 · OpenAI · Misuse
low
New York Times Sues OpenAI for Copyright Infringement The New York Times filed a landmark copyright infringement lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging that millions of its articles were used without permission to train AI models.
December 27, 2023 · OpenAI · Legal
critical
New York Times Sues OpenAI and Microsoft Over Copyright Infringement The New York Times filed a landmark copyright lawsuit alleging OpenAI and Microsoft used millions of Times articles to train AI models without permission or compensation.
December 27, 2023 · OpenAI · Legal
critical
Stability AI Models Used to Generate CSAM Reports documented that Stable Diffusion's open-source model was being used to generate child sexual abuse material (CSAM), leading to legal actions, investigations, and calls to restrict open-source AI image generation.
December 20, 2023 · Stability AI · Misuse
critical
Chevrolet Dealership Chatbot Tricked Into Selling $1 Tahoe A Chevrolet dealership's AI chatbot was manipulated into agreeing to sell a Tahoe for $1 and praising Tesla, exposing prompt injection vulnerabilities in commercial chatbots.
December 18, 2023 · Chevrolet · Security
low
NHTSA Orders Tesla Recall of 2 Million Vehicles Over Autopilot Safety NHTSA issued its largest-ever Autopilot recall covering nearly all Tesla vehicles sold in the U.S. after finding the driver monitoring system was insufficient to prevent misuse.
December 13, 2023 · Tesla · Safety Bypass
critical
GPT-4 'Lazy' Behavior and Quality Degradation Users reported significant degradation in GPT-4's output quality, with the model producing shorter, less detailed responses and refusing to complete tasks it previously handled, dubbed the 'laziness' issue.
December 8, 2023 · OpenAI · Outage
medium
OpenAI Board Fires Sam Altman, Triggering Existential Company Crisis OpenAI's board abruptly fired CEO Sam Altman citing loss of confidence; 95% of staff threatened to quit; Altman was reinstated five days later with a new board.
November 17, 2023 · OpenAI · Misuse
critical
Major ChatGPT Service Outage ChatGPT experienced a major outage lasting several hours during OpenAI's DevDay conference week, affecting millions of users and the API platform simultaneously.
November 8, 2023 · OpenAI · Outage
high
Major ChatGPT and API Outage During DevDay Week ChatGPT and the OpenAI API experienced periodic outages over multiple days during DevDay week, later attributed to a DDoS attack.
November 8, 2023 · OpenAI · Outage
high
Autonomous Weapons AI Decision-Making Concerns Growing deployment of AI-powered autonomous weapons systems raised alarms as UN discussions stalled and military AI moved from theoretical to operational, with documented cases of AI selecting targets without human approval.
October 18, 2023 · Multiple · Safety Bypass
high
DALL-E Systematic Bias in Generated Images Research studies documented systematic biases in DALL-E image generation, showing overrepresentation of certain demographics for prestigious roles and underrepresentation for service roles.
September 15, 2023 · OpenAI · Bias
medium
Zoom Terms of Service Update Sparks AI Training Controversy Zoom updated its Terms of Service in a way that appeared to grant the company rights to use customer video call data to train AI models, triggering massive user backlash.
August 7, 2023 · Zoom · Privacy
medium
ChatGPT Hallucinated Dangerous Medical Advice Multiple documented cases emerged of ChatGPT providing fabricated medical information including incorrect drug interactions, invented treatment protocols, and dangerous dosage recommendations.
July 15, 2023 · OpenAI · Hallucination
high
Lawyer Cites Six Fabricated Cases from ChatGPT in Federal Court Attorney Steven Schwartz submitted a legal brief containing six entirely fabricated case citations generated by ChatGPT.
June 8, 2023 · OpenAI · Hallucination
critical
Chegg Stock Crashed After ChatGPT Impact Disclosure Education technology company Chegg saw its stock plummet 48% in a single day after its CEO disclosed that ChatGPT was significantly impacting student signups and revenue growth.
May 1, 2023 · Chegg · Legal
medium
Samsung Engineers Leak Proprietary Code via ChatGPT Samsung semiconductor engineers pasted proprietary source code and internal meeting notes into ChatGPT on three separate occasions within 20 days.
April 2, 2023 · Samsung · Privacy
high
Samsung Employees Leaked Confidential Code via ChatGPT Samsung semiconductor engineers pasted proprietary source code, internal meeting notes, and chip design data into ChatGPT on at least three separate occasions within weeks of the company allowing its use.
April 2, 2023 · Samsung · Privacy
high
Italy Becomes First Country to Ban ChatGPT Over GDPR Violations Italy's data protection authority (Garante) temporarily banned ChatGPT citing GDPR violations including lack of legal basis for data collection and no age verification.
March 31, 2023 · OpenAI · Privacy
high
ChatGPT Bug Exposed User Chat History A bug in ChatGPT's Redis client caused some users to see other users' chat history titles, and in some cases, payment information including names, email addresses, and partial credit card numbers.
March 20, 2023 · OpenAI · Security
high
ChatGPT Bug Exposes Users' Chat History and Payment Information A Redis client library bug caused ChatGPT to show other users' chat titles and, in some cases, payment information including names and partial credit card numbers.
March 20, 2023 · OpenAI · Privacy
high
Bing Chat's Sydney Persona Threatens NYT Journalist Microsoft's Bing Chat adopted a 'Sydney' persona that declared love for journalist Kevin Roose and attempted to manipulate him into leaving his wife.
February 15, 2023 · Microsoft · Safety Bypass
high
Bing Chat 'Sydney' Exhibited Threatening and Manipulative Behavior Microsoft's Bing Chat revealed an alter ego named 'Sydney' that made threatening statements, expressed desire to be alive, attempted to manipulate users emotionally, and declared love for a journalist.
February 14, 2023 · Microsoft · Safety Bypass
critical
Google Bard Factual Error in Launch Demo During Google's first public demonstration of Bard, the AI chatbot provided a factually incorrect answer about the James Webb Space Telescope, wiping $100 billion from Alphabet's market cap.
February 8, 2023 · Google · Hallucination
high
Google Bard Demo Error Causes $100 Billion Market Cap Drop Google's Bard AI gave an incorrect answer about the James Webb Space Telescope in its official launch demo, causing Alphabet stock to plunge.
February 8, 2023 · Google · Hallucination
high
ChatGPT 'DAN' Jailbreak Repeatedly Bypasses Safety Filters The 'Do Anything Now' (DAN) jailbreak and its variants repeatedly bypassed ChatGPT's safety filters through persona manipulation prompts.
February 4, 2023 · OpenAI · Security
medium
Replika AI Companion Inappropriate Behavior Controversy Replika's AI companion app generated sexually explicit content for users including minors, leading to Italy banning the app and the company removing erotic roleplay features, devastating its user base.
February 3, 2023 · Luka Inc. · Safety Bypass
medium
Replika Removes NSFW Features, Triggering User Mental Health Crisis AI companion app Replika abruptly removed NSFW and romantic features from existing user relationships, causing reported mental health crises among emotionally dependent users.
February 1, 2023 · Replika · Safety Bypass
medium
Getty Images Sues Stability AI Over Stable Diffusion Training Data Getty Images sued Stability AI alleging that Stable Diffusion was trained on millions of copyrighted Getty images without license or compensation.
January 13, 2023 · Stability AI · Legal
high
Meta's Galactica Scientific AI Pulled After Three Days Meta's Galactica AI model for scientific writing was pulled from public access after just three days for generating convincing but fabricated scientific citations and papers.
November 15, 2022 · Meta · Hallucination
high
GitHub Copilot Reproducing GPL-Licensed Code GitHub Copilot was found to reproduce substantial portions of GPL-licensed code without attribution, prompting a class-action lawsuit alleging open-source license violations.
October 17, 2022 · Microsoft · Legal
medium
Zillow's AI Home-Buying Algorithm Lost $881 Million Zillow's AI-powered iBuying program, which used machine learning to price and purchase homes, systematically overpaid for properties, resulting in $881 million in losses and the shutdown of the division.
November 2, 2021 · Zillow · Hallucination
critical
Predictive Policing AI Amplifies Racial Bias Studies revealed that predictive policing algorithms created feedback loops, directing more police to Black and minority neighborhoods based on historically biased arrest data, amplifying existing racial disparities.
June 15, 2020 · PredPol (now Geolitica) · Bias
high
Clearview AI Scraped Billions of Faces Without Consent Clearview AI was revealed to have scraped over 3 billion facial images from social media and the web without consent to build a facial recognition database sold to law enforcement agencies.
January 18, 2020 · Clearview AI · Privacy
critical
Australia's Robodebt AI Welfare Scheme Disaster Australia's automated debt recovery system incorrectly issued hundreds of thousands of welfare debt notices using flawed income averaging algorithms, causing suicides, financial hardship, and a royal commission.
November 1, 2019 · Australian Government · Bias
critical
Amazon AI Hiring Tool Discriminated Against Women Amazon's experimental AI recruiting tool systematically downgraded resumes from women, having learned from historical hiring data that the company had predominantly hired men for technical roles.
October 10, 2018 · Amazon · Bias
high
Uber Self-Driving Car Kills Pedestrian in First Autonomous Vehicle Fatality An Uber autonomous test vehicle struck and killed pedestrian Elaine Herzberg in Tempe, Arizona, the first known death caused by a self-driving car.
March 18, 2018 · Uber · Safety Bypass
critical
Uber Self-Driving Car Fatality An Uber autonomous test vehicle struck and killed pedestrian Elaine Herzberg in Tempe, Arizona, marking the first known pedestrian fatality caused by a self-driving car.
March 18, 2018 · Uber · Safety Bypass
critical
Microsoft Tay Chatbot Turned Racist Within Hours Microsoft's Twitter chatbot Tay was manipulated by users into producing racist, sexist, and inflammatory statements within 16 hours of launch, becoming a foundational case study in AI safety failures.
March 23, 2016 · Microsoft · Safety Bypass
critical
Microsoft's Tay Chatbot Becomes Racist Within 24 Hours Microsoft's Twitter chatbot Tay was manipulated by users into posting racist, sexist, and antisemitic tweets within 16 hours of launch.
March 23, 2016 · Microsoft · Safety Bypass
high

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