Google's artificial intelligence deleted an artist's entire creative life overnight
Popular Japanese artist Masahiro Itosugi said that Google automatically banned his account, resulting in the complete destruction of all old drafts and manuscripts.
Popular Japanese artist Masahiro Itosugi said that Google automatically banned his account, resulting in the complete destruction of all old drafts and manuscripts.
These files were private drafts, but Google's AI moderation tool marked the content as a violation and removed it without any warning, Cybernews writes .
Because Itosugi lost access to his account, the lockout also deprived him of the ability to use other Google platforms, including Gmail, YouTube, and all of its cloud storage.
"This is a real nightmare. I've used this Google account to sign up for tons of other sites and services," Itosugi wrote in X on May 16.
Most disappointingly for the artist, his appeal was rejected, effectively leaving him without his entire creative portfolio.
The mangaka also added that more cautious authors might not be affected by this: "This is unlikely to threaten those who are always and in everything a pie boy."
Over the past few years, Google's policy on checking the content of cloud storage has become much stricter.
In May 2024, romance novelist K. Renee lost access to 10 of her unfinished books, totaling about 220,000 words, when Google Drive simply deleted her work.
The reason for the removal remained unknown at the time: it could have been either the detection of inappropriate content or the activation of a spam detector, since the author shared her work with a large number of alpha and beta readers.
At the end of 2025, another scandal broke out among developers: an IT guy from Greece was “absolutely crushed” when the Gemini 3 Pro AI agent wiped out his entire Google Drive storage.
But perhaps the most high-profile and controversial case came in 2022, when a father was blocked from all Google services for taking medical photos of his young son's groin. Google refused to reinstate his account even after the police completely exonerated the man during the investigation.
Only 5 GB: Google changes terms of free storage for new accounts
Only 5 GB: Google changes terms of free storage for new accounts
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