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
197 incidents
HUD charges Facebook with enabling housing discrimination
In March 2019 the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development charged Facebook with violating the Fair Housing Act by allowing real estate sellers to target advertisements in a discriminatory manner.
Amazon's Rekognition Falsely Matched Members of Congress to Mugshots
Rekognition's face comparison feature was shown by the ACLU to have misidentified members of congress, and particularly members of colors, as other people who have been arrested using a mugshot database built on publicly available arrest photos.
Transgender Uber Drivers Mistakenly Kicked off App for Appearance Change during Gender Transitions
Transgender Uber drivers reported being automatically deactivated from the app due to Real-Time ID Check failing to account for difference in appearance of people undergoing gender transitions.
Content Using Bestiality Thumbnails Allegedly Evaded YouTube’s Thumbnail Monitoring System
YouTube’s thumbnail monitoring system was allegedly evaded by content farms such as ones in Cambodia who spike viewership and generate ad revenue using bestiality-themed thumbnails.
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.
Robot Deployed by Animal Shelter to Patrol Sidewalks outside Its Office, Warding off Homeless People in San Francisco
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) deployed a Knightscope robot to autonomously patrol the area outside its office and ward off homeless people, which was criticized by residents as a tool of intimidation and ordered by the city of San Francisco to stop its use on a public right-of-way.
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.
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.