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Human behaviour
AI incidents involving defensive denial
Headlights has recorded defensive denial as the main behaviour in 5 of the 234 incidents in the library (2%), and as a contributing behaviour in 16 more. They span 2019 to 2025. Most come from Education (4), Government & public administration (4), Consumer AI (3).
Headlights' test for defensive denial
After the failure, the organisation denied, minimised or refused to reconsider, on the record.
A behaviour tag is Headlights' reading of the public record, not a finding by any court, regulator or company. Each entry gives the one sentence in the record that supports it.
Main behaviour in the record · 5
HD-INC-229Spain's National Court Held Foundever Withheld the Formula That Set Staff Rest DaysSpain · 2025HD-INC-0819News Melbourne aired an altered image of MP the MP, reportedly exposing her midriff and enlarging her chest, and attributed the change to Photoshop's automationAustralia · 2024HD-INC-043A Cruise robotaxi dragged a pedestrian twenty feet, and the company left the dragging out of what it told regulatorsUnited States · 2023HD-INC-023Clearview AI Built a Face Search Engine From Billions of Scraped Photos Without ConsentAustralia · 2021HD-INC-001Air Canada chatbot promised a bereavement refund policy that did not existCanada · 2022
Also present · 16
HD-INC-222Korea's State Auditor Found AI Digital Textbooks Were Brought Into Schools Without a PilotSouth Korea · 2025HD-INC-202Israel's Supreme Court Found Uncontrolled AI Use in a City's Refusal LetterIsrael · 2025HD-INC-201Home Affairs' System Ended a Bridging Visa Unlawfully, the Commonwealth Ombudsman FoundAustralia · 2023HD-INC-179Police intelligence used to support an away fan ban contained eight reported errors, including a Copilot result about a match that never happenedUnited Kingdom · 2025HD-INC-168Google's Gemma model produced a fabricated criminal allegation about a sitting US senator, and Google withdrew the model from AI Studio while keeping it available through the APIUnited States · 2025HD-INC-164Researchers ran AI-written comments under fabricated personas at Reddit users for four months, and the community learned of it only when the researchers told the moderators afterwardsSwitzerland · 2025HD-INC-161Meta's standalone AI app carried a Discover feed that reporters found was publishing users' conversations, in the cases they documented alongside a linked Facebook or Instagram profile, and the company added a warning screen after the reportingUnited States · 2025HD-INC-145An NHS-partnered health app's AI checker was flagged for missing serious conditions, and the regulator shared the concernsUnited Kingdom · 2020HD-INC-121A widely used US healthcare algorithm judged how sick patients were by what had been spent on their care, so patients the system had historically spent less on were rated healthier and passed over for extra help, and researchers found the bias cut those referrals by more than halfUnited States · 2019HD-INC-117A Wisconsin school system's dropout-prediction algorithm raised false alarms far more often for some students than others, and the state's own analysis had already found it unfairUnited States · 2023HD-INC-116For over a decade the Post Office prosecuted the people who run its branches for money that its Horizon accounting system had invented, and a public inquiry found its own bosses knew the system could be wrongUnited Kingdom · 2025HD-INC-107Testing published by The Washington Post found Snapchat's My AI would advise an account presented as a 13-year-old about a first sexual experience with an adult, and Snap opened the chatbot to every user about five weeks laterUnited States · 2023HD-INC-100Telangana used an algorithm to cancel millions of food-ration cards, and India's Supreme Court ordered all cancelled cards to be re-verifiedIndia · 2022HD-INC-098DoNotPay marketed a 'robot lawyer', but the FTC said it never checked whether the AI matched a real lawyer, and fined the company and barred the claimUnited States · 2024HD-INC-092The FTC barred Evolv from claiming its AI scanner detects all weapons, after citing a knife it missed in a school stabbingUnited States · 2024HD-INC-067A journalist cloned his own voice with AI and walked through the voiceprint security on Centrelink's phone self-service lineAustralia · 2023
Related topics
- Education 4
- Government & public administration 4
- Consumer AI 3
- Overconfidence 8
- Automation bias 2
- Group conformity 2
- Judgement surrendered 2
- United States 8
- Australia 4
- United Kingdom 3
Cite this page: Harris, E. (2026). AI incidents involving defensive denial. Headlights. https://useheadlights.com/topics/behaviour/defensive-denial/