AI Incidents
Real-world cases where AI systems caused harm, classified by risk domain and entity. Data sourced from 
AIID and classified by 
MIT AI Risk Initiative. CC BY-SA 4.0
217 incidents
Argentinian City Government Deployed Teenage-Pregnancy Predictive Algorithm Using Invasive Demographic Data
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.
Man Arrested For Sock Theft by False Facial Match Despite Alibi
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.
Instagram's Exposure of Harmful Content Allegedly Contributed to Teenage Girl's Suicide
Instagram was ruled by a judge to have contributed to the death of a teenage girl in the UK allegedly through its exposure and recommendation of suicide, self-harm, and depressive content.
Biased Sentiment Analysis
Google Cloud's Natural Language API provided racist, homophobic, amd antisemitic sentiment analyses.
Russian Chatbot Supports Stalin and Violence
Yandex, a Russian technology company, released an artificially intelligent chat bot named Alice which began to reply to questions with racist, pro-stalin, and pro-violence responses
WeChat’s Machine Translation Gave a Racist English Translation for the Chinese Term for “Black Foreigner”
The Chinese platform WeChat provided an inappropriate and racist English translation for the Chinese term for “black foreigner” in its messaging app.
Offensive Instagram User Content Displayed as Facebook Ad
An Instagram user’s image containing violent content was reportedly used as advertisement on Facebook allegedly via automated means.
AI-Assisted Body Scanners Reportedly Subjected Transgender Travelers to Invasive Body Searches
Transportation Security Administration (TSA)'s use of image-processing body scanners at airports led transgender and gender-nonconforming travelers to be subjected to allegedly discriminatory and invasive searches, such as being asked to remove undergarments in private rooms by officers not of their gender.
AI-Designed Phone Cases Are Unexpected
A third-party Amazon merchant named “my_handy_design” was suspected of using a bot to generate cell phone case designs based on the bizarre and unattractive designs being offered.
Airbnb's Trustworthiness Algorithm Allegedly Banned Users without Explanation, and Discriminated against Sex Workers
Airbnb allegedly considered publicly available data on users to gauge their trustworthiness via algorithmic assessment of personality and behavioral traits, resulting in unexplained bans and discriminatory bans against sex workers.
FaceApp Racial Filters
FaceApp is criticized for offering racist filters.
Gender Biases in Google Translate
A Cornell University study in 2016 highlighted Google Translate's pattern of assigning gender to occupations in a way showing an implicit gender bias against women.
Pennsylvania County's Family Screening Tool Allegedly Exhibited Discriminatory Effects
Data analysis by the American Civil Liberty Union (ACLU) on Allegheny County's decision-support Family Screening Tool to predict child abuse or neglect risk found the tool resulting in higher screen-in rates for Black families and higher risk scores for households with disabled residents.
Social Media's Automated Word-Flagging without Context Shifted Content Creators' Language Use
TikTok's, YouTube's, Instagram's, and Twitch's use of algorithms to flag certain words devoid of context changed content creators' use of everyday language or discussion about certain topics in fear of their content getting flagged or auto-demonetized by mistake.
Uber Locked Indian Drivers out of Accounts Allegedly Due to Facial Recognition Fails
Uber drivers in India reported being locked out of their accounts allegedly due to Real-Time ID Check's facial recognition failing to recognize appearance changes or faces in low lighting conditions.