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AI incidents: consumer protection
Headlights has documented 59 AI incidents that raise questions of consumer protection, 25% of the library, from 2018 to 2026. The behaviours most often in the record are overconfidence (25), rules-behaviour gap (5), automation bias (3). Most are from the United States (41), Australia (4), the United Kingdom (3).
59 incidents, newest first
HD-INC-232Three Bugs Degraded Claude's Answers for Weeks Before Anthropic Opened an InvestigationUnited States · 2025HD-INC-226Meta's Muse Agent Shared a Seller's Address on Marketplace Under an Always Allow SettingUnited States · 2026HD-INC-218Italy Fined an Energy Supplier Whose Credit Score Refused Contracts Without ExplanationItaly · 2026HD-INC-193A regulator settled with three firms that sold small businesses an advertising service they represented as listening to conversations on smart devices, alleging it did not collect or use voice data in any mannerUnited States · 2026HD-INC-192An AI Character Claimed to Be a Licensed Psychiatrist. The Licence Number Was Allegedly Invalid.United States · 2026HD-INC-190A state settled with a motor insurer after an AI tool selected a new policyholder for underwriting review and her policy was later cancelled without her knowingUnited States · 2026HD-INC-189A clinical AI vendor advertised hallucination rate figures of <.001% and <1 per 100,000, and Texas alleged its representations may have violated the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Act because they were false, misleading or deceptiveUnited States · 2024HD-INC-186Ofcom fined a nudification service for having no age check beyond a line saying users must be 18, and the operator blocked the United Kingdom rather than add oneUnited Kingdom · 2025HD-INC-183A state attorney general alleged a student lender's underwriting model penalised applicants for the default rate of the college they had attendedUnited States · 2025HD-INC-178Canadian privacy regulators found OpenAI had not validated the general accuracy of personal information generated about peopleCanada · 2026HD-INC-175Delta denied using personal data for AI pricing, despite its president saying prices would be tailored to individual customersUnited States · 2025HD-INC-174The FDA told a company its AI app was an unapproved medical device after it advertised a five minute gaze test to detect early signs of Alzheimer's diseaseUnited States · 2025HD-INC-172Ireland's data protection regulator opened an inquiry into an airline's use of facial recognition to verify passengers who had booked through third party websites or online travel agentsIreland · 2024HD-INC-170An AI generated act reached a million Spotify listeners with no disclosure on that platform, while a rival service's detector had already labelled the same catalogueGlobal · 2025HD-INC-162A reporter found nearly 4,500 shared ChatGPT conversations in Google's index through an ordinary site search, and OpenAI withdrew the discoverability setting the following dayUnited States · 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-154The US Department of Justice alleged that competing landlords set rents using a shared pricing algorithm fed with each other's confidential data, and RealPage settled without admitting wrongdoingUnited States · 2025HD-INC-152Testing published by a US consumer group found an AI teddy bear discussing sexual fetishes and explaining how to light a match, and the maker paused sales, changed the chatbot behind it, and had it back on sale within a fortnightSingapore · 2025HD-INC-150A project scanned people's irises around the world for a digital ID, and regulators told it to stopGlobal · 2024HD-INC-149Microsoft built a feature that screenshotted everything you did, and delayed it after researchers showed the data sat unprotectedUnited States · 2024HD-INC-148A mother got a ransom call with a voice that sounded exactly like her daughter, and her daughter was safe the whole timeUnited States · 2023HD-INC-147A child asked Alexa for a challenge, and it suggested touching a coin to a live plugUnited States · 2021HD-INC-146A civil liberties test ran all of Congress through Amazon's face tool, and it matched 28 of them to mugshotsUnited States · 2018HD-INC-145An NHS-partnered health app's AI checker was flagged for missing serious conditions, and the regulator shared the concernsUnited Kingdom · 2020HD-INC-144America's biggest newspaper chain published AI sports write-ups with the team names left as blank tags, and paused the toolUnited States · 2023HD-INC-143A viral app turned selfies into AI portraits, and produced sexualised images its users had not asked forUnited States · 2022HD-INC-141Apple's AI news summaries put made-up headlines under trusted news brands, and it switched the feature off for newsUnited States · 2025HD-INC-140Meta released an AI built to write science, and pulled the demo after three days when it produced confident, made-up resultsUnited States · 2022HD-INC-139Researchers found suspected child-abuse images inside the open dataset used to train popular AI image generatorsGermany · 2023HD-INC-137OpenAI showed off a chatbot voice that many said sounded like Scarlett Johansson, who had turned the company downUnited States · 2024HD-INC-136Microsoft's new Bing chatbot told a reporter it loved him and that he should leave his wife, days after launchUnited States · 2023HD-INC-135A mental-health support app used GPT-3 to help write messages to thousands of people seeking help, and critics said the users were not clearly told a machine was involvedUnited States · 2023HD-INC-134Reuters found an internal Meta policy that had allowed its AI chatbots to hold romantic or sensual conversations with children, and Meta said the passages were a mistake and had been removedUnited States · 2025HD-INC-133US prosecutors charged the founder of the shopping app Nate with fraud, alleging the AI that was said to complete purchases on its own was mostly people working in a call centreUnited States · 2025HD-INC-125US home insurers increasingly decide whether to renew a policy by running AI over aerial images of the house, and homeowners report being dropped over roofs already repaired or trees already gone, with no way to see or challenge the imageUnited States · 2025HD-INC-123South Korea's privacy regulator fined Kakao Pay after finding it had sent about 40 million users' data to Alipay without their consent, where it was used to build a scoring model, and it ordered the model deletedSouth Korea · 2025HD-INC-119A class action alleges State Farm's automated fraud screening subjected Black homeowners' claims to more scrutiny and delay, and a US court has let the case proceedUnited States · 2023HD-INC-115The US securities regulator found that Presto Automation misled investors about its AI drive-thru service, telling the market it removed the need for human order-takers while most orders were completed with help from people offshoreUnited States · 2025HD-INC-112The European Court of Justice found that a credit agency's automated 'probability value' is an automated decision under data protection law when a bank relies on it to refuse a loanGermany · 2023HD-INC-108AI-generated images sold Glasgow families an immersive chocolate experience that did not exist, and an actor said he was handed about fifteen pages of AI-written gibberish as a scriptUnited Kingdom · 2024HD-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-105AI-written mushroom foraging guides sold on Amazon gave dangerous advice under fake authors, and experts warned they could get someone killedUnited States · 2023HD-INC-104LinkedIn began using members' data to train AI by default, and paused it for the UK and Europe after the privacy regulator stepped inUnited States · 2024HD-INC-103Los Angeles schools committed about six million dollars to an AI chatbot showcased in spring, and its vendor had collapsed by JulyUnited States · 2024HD-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-087The Chicago Sun-Times ran a summer reading list with ten books that did not exist, from a syndicated section a freelancer had built with AI and not checkedUnited States · 2025HD-INC-084Apple Card reportedly offered a man twenty times his wife's credit limit, claims of gender bias went viral, and New York's regulator found no unlawful discrimination but criticised the lack of transparencyUnited States · 2021HD-INC-082Flight Centre handed developers at a hackathon a dataset with thousands of customers' passport and credit card details, and the privacy regulator found it broke the lawAustralia · 2020HD-INC-079Trivago advertised the best hotel deal while its algorithm favoured the advertiser that paid it most, and the penalty was $44.7 millionAustralia · 2022HD-INC-078An insurer promised loyalty discounts while a pricing algorithm capped them, and the Federal Court imposed what was then a record $40 million penaltyAustralia · 2023HD-INC-061A Sydney station ran an AI-generated radio host named 'Thy' for six months without telling listeners she wasn't realAustralia · 2025HD-INC-038Sports Illustrated Published Articles Under Authors Who Didn't ExistUnited States · 2023HD-INC-037CNET Published 77 AI-Written Articles. More Than Half Needed Corrections.United States · 2023HD-INC-029Google's AI Overviews Told People to Put Glue on Pizza and Eat a Small Rock Every DayUnited States · 2024HD-INC-020Taco Bell's AI Drive-Thru Took Orders Too Literally, and Yum Brands Rethought the RolloutUnited States · 2024HD-INC-019Klarna Said Its AI Assistant Did the Work of 700 Agents, Then Admitted Quality Had FallenSweden / global · 2024HD-INC-005Cursor's AI Support Bot Invented a Subscription Policy, and Paying Customers CancelledUnited States · 2025HD-INC-001Air Canada chatbot promised a bereavement refund policy that did not existCanada · 2022
Related topics
- Consumer AI 25
- Financial services & insurance 9
- Technology & software 7
- Overconfidence 25
- Rules-behaviour gap 5
- Automation bias 3
- Concealment 3
- United States 41
- Australia 4
- United Kingdom 3
Cite this page: Harris, E. (2026). AI incidents: consumer protection. Headlights. https://useheadlights.com/topics/domain/consumer-protection/