Has Wells Fargo had a publicly reported AI incident?
Yes. As of Oct 21, 2026, the register holds 2 publicly reported AI incidents at Wells Fargo since January 2022. The most recent is "DoNotPay says an AI voice clone got Wells Fargo to refund fees; the bank says the call didn't happen as shown" (Jan 4, 2023), status: disputed, severity 1 of 5. Last swept Oct 21, 2026 (17 queries).
| Date | Institution | Incident | AI? | Role | Category | Severity | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 4, 2023 | Wells Fargo | DoNotPay says an AI voice clone got Wells Fargo to refund fees; the bank says the call didn't happen as shown | AI (stated) | AI used against the institution | Voice clone | 1 | Disputed |
| Feb 17, 2022 | Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. | Suits alleged Wells Fargo's automated mortgage underwriting discriminated against minority applicants | Automation, not AI | Governance finding | Litigation | 3 | Settled |
Jan 4, 2023 · AI used against the institution · severity 1/5
DoNotPay says an AI voice clone got Wells Fargo to refund fees; the bank says the call didn't happen as shown
In January 2023 DoNotPay chief executive Joshua Browder posted a video he claimed showed a bot, speaking in an AI-generated clone of his own voice, calling Wells Fargo customer support and getting wire-transfer fees on his account refunded, as reported by Vice's Motherboard and Futurism. Browder said the tool combined Resemble.ai, the GPT-J language model and DoNotPay's own models. Wells Fargo disputes the account: it told Motherboard its call recordings showed "the customer's call to Wells Fargo didn't happen the way it's presented in the video" and that the video appeared edited. Browder denied editing it beyond removing his account number. It was a demonstration on his own account, not fraud, and no loss was reported.
Feb 17, 2022 · Governance finding · severity 3/5
Suits alleged Wells Fargo's automated mortgage underwriting discriminated against minority applicants
From February 2022, Black and Hispanic mortgage applicants filed six putative class actions against Wells Fargo in the Northern District of California, alleging that its centralized automated underwriting, which they called CORE/ECS, denied them loans, delayed them or gave them worse terms. The suits followed a March 2022 Bloomberg analysis that Wells Fargo approved 47% of Black refinance applicants in 2020 against 72% of White applicants. Wells Fargo said human underwriters decide and that its scoring models are simple scorecards that do not use AI. On 5 August 2025 the court denied class certification for lack of commonality, and the Ninth Circuit declined to hear an appeal. The named plaintiffs then settled individually; on 30 September 2026 the court closed the case. No terms were disclosed and no court found discrimination.
Not incidents: precautions and statements with no reported harm.
- CFPB warns banks that poorly deployed chatbots can breach consumer law (Jun 6, 2023)
- Senate Banking chair presses six banks on voice authentication after AI voice clones fooled bank systems (May 4, 2023)
- JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citi, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and Wells Fargo restrict staff use of ChatGPT (Feb 22, 2023)
Entries come from the register of AI incidents at banks: events since January 2022, each sourced to two independent publishers or one official or court document, with the institution's response recorded. A sweep searches news, regulator, court and security sources for the institution by name; its date, query count and result are logged on the register's method section.
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