Brazil's Social Security AI Tool Is Allegedly Rejecting Complex Claims Improperly

April 24, 2025

Brazil’s Meu INSS app, an AI tool used for social security claims, is under scrutiny for allegedly misgendering a claimant. Josélia de Brito, a former sugarcane worker suffering from multiple chronic illnesses, was reportedly recorded as male by the system. The incident highlights potential disadvantages faced by rural and digitally excluded users in adopting safe and secure AI practices. For those interested in shaping trustworthy AI governance, learn how this incident maps to the HISPI Project Cerebellum TAIM – Govern function.

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Matched TAIM controls

Suggested mapping from embedding similarity (not a formal assessment). Browse all TAIM controls

MAP 1.6 — similarity 0.664, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MEASURE 2.10 — similarity 0.650, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 4.1 — similarity 0.645, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Alleged deployer: instituto-nacional-do-seguro-social-(inss), government-of-brazil
Alleged developer: dataprev
Alleged harmed parties: rural-workers-in-brazil, digitally-excluded-populations

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/1046

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.