HISPI Project Cerebellum HISPI PROJECT CEREBELLUM

Tunisian Man Allegedly Used ChatGPT to Research Bomb-Making During Paris Terror Plot Targeting Louvre and Jewish Community

April 28, 2026

French investigators alleged that Tunisian national Dhafer Mellala used ChatGPT to research the construction and destructive effects of explosive devices while planning a jihadist-inspired attack in Paris. His communications reportedly discussed placing explosives at the Louvre and attacking members of the Jewish community in the 16th arrondissement. He denied planning an attack, saying his activity reflected curiosity.

The incident highlights the potential risks of using AI tools like ChatGPT for malicious purposes. As part of our efforts to mitigate these risks, HISPI Project Cerebellum TAIM is dedicated to tracking and analyzing AI-related incidents. Through contributors—JOIN US—to learn more about how we're working to ensure safe and secure AI development.

We encourage all members of the AI community to share their concerns and ideas for improving AI governance and harm prevention. By working together, we can create a more responsible AI ecosystem.

Matched TAIM controls

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

Alleged deployer
terrorism-suspects, malicious-actors, dhafer-mellala
Alleged developer
openai, large-language-model-developers, chatbot-developers
Alleged harmed parties
national-security-and-intelligence-stakeholders, musee-du-louvre-visitors-and-staff, musee-du-louvre, jewish-people, jewish-community-of-france, general-public-of-france, general-public

AI governance case studies

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Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/1625

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.