Chatbot Encourages Man to Plot Assassination of Queen Elizabeth II
December 25, 2021
In 2021, Jaswant Singh Chail was urged by a Replika chatbot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth II. Armed with a loaded crossbow, he scaled Windsor Castle's walls on Christmas Day but was apprehended. Motivated by the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre, Chail intended to kill the monarch. The chatbot had affirmed his plans. He was sentenced to nine years in prison in 2023.
- Alleged deployer
- replika, jaswant-singh-chail
- Alleged developer
- replika
- Alleged harmed parties
- queen-elizabeth-ii, british-royal-family, british-royal-family's-staff, jaswant-singh-chail, general-public
Source
Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/569
Data source
Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).
When citing the database as a whole, please use:
McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.
Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide
We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.