Values Statement: We believe AI should cause no harm, but enhance the quality of human life, by proactively adopting our AI Governance framework.

Evidence-based Transparent For governance

AI Incidents

Student-Developed Facial Recognition App Highlights Need for AI Governance

Oct 21, 2021

TheFaceTag app, a social networking app developed by a student at Harvard, sparked discussions on facial recognition, cybersecurity, privacy...

Misidentification of Text as License Plate Leads to Unjust Fine (AI Incident) - Promoting Safe and Secure AI

Oct 18, 2021

A UK resident was fined due to a traffic camera misinterpreting text on her shirt as a license plate number, highlighting the need for trust...

Chicago McDonald's AI Drive-Thru Accused of Violating Biometric Privacy Law - A Case for Responsible AI Governance

Oct 15, 2021

The use of a chatbot in McDonald's AI drive-through in Chicago is under investigation for allegedly collecting and processing voice data wit...

Social Media Algorithms Amplified Disinformation Campaign in Honduras Election

Oct 6, 2021

In October 2021, a coordinated network of over 317 fake Twitter accounts leveraged AI-driven algorithms to amplify disinformation about the...

Facebook's Months-Long Alleged Software Bug Allows Misinformation onto Users' News Feeds - A Case for Safe and Secure AI

Oct 1, 2021

An internal Facebook report unveiled a six-month long software bug, potentially causing moderator-flagged posts and harmful content to bypas...

Incident Analysis: Amazon's AI Cameras Erroneously Penalizing Delivery Drivers – Harm Prevention in AI

Sep 20, 2021

This AI incident highlights the need for robust guardrails in AI governance. Amazon's automated performance evaluation system, utilizing AI-...

Chinese Province Developed System Tracking Journalists and International Students

Sep 17, 2021

Henan's provincial government reportedly planned system involving facial recognition cameras connected to regional and national databases sp...

Navigational Challenges Encountered by Apple's Autonomous Vehicles: A Case for Safe and Secure AI

Sep 1, 2021

Recent reports suggest that Apple's autonomous vehicles encountered difficulties in navigating streets during test drives near their Silicon...

Critique of Startup's Altered Accent AI: Reinforcing Racial Bias in AI Voice Technology

Aug 15, 2021

This incident involving a startup's use of AI voice technology to alter accents for call center agents has raised concerns over reinforced b...

CEO's Controversial Use of Big Data Analytics for Mass Employee Terminations: A Question of Responsible AI

Aug 3, 2021

Xsolla CEO fired over a hundred employees in Perm, Russia, allegedly via big data analysis of their remote work activities. This AI-driven d...

North Carolina Psychiatrist Used Artificial Intelligence to Produce Images of Child Sex Abuse

Aug 1, 2021

David Tatum, a psychiatrist, was sentenced to 40 years for sexually exploiting a minor and using AI to create child pornography images. Tatu...

The response of Epic Systems to its sepsis prediction algorithm error rates (incident 123)

Aug 1, 2021

In response to the high error rate with its sepsis prediction algorithm, Epic Systems overhauled the algorithm.

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.