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
244 incidents
Dutch Families Wrongfully Accused of Tax Fraud Due to Discriminatory Algorithm
A childcare benefits system in the Netherlands falsely accused thousands of families of fraud, in part due to an algorithm that treated having a second nationality as a risk factor.
Facebook Allegedly Failed to Police Anti-Rohingya Hate Speech Content That Contributed to Violence in Myanmar
Facebook allegedly did not adequately remove anti-Rohingya hate speech, some of which was extremely violent and dehumanizing, on its platform, contributing to the violence faced by Rohingya communities in Myanmar.
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.
Chinese Tech Firms Allegedly Developed Facial Recognition to Identify People by Race, Targeting Uyghur Muslims
Various Chinese firms were revealed by patent applications to have developed facial recognition capable of detecting people by race, which critics feared would enable persecution and discrimination of Uyghur Muslims.
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.
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.
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.