OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, is facing a series of challenges. In addition to being investigated by several countries for lack of transparency in the potential use of user data, and being caught in a difficult position in Europe due to the upcoming “AI law,” they recently received their first defamation lawsuit.
According to Bloomberg, Mark Walters, a radio host from Georgia (United States), has filed a lawsuit against the AI company after discovering that ChatGPT falsely claimed that Walters had been accused of fraud and misappropriation of funds from a non-profit organization.
The lawsuit filed in Georgia states that this information was generated in response to a request from a third party, journalist Fred Riehl, who asked ChatGPT to summarize an ongoing federal court case unrelated to Walters. As often happens with ChatGPT, the AI ended up mixing real information with invented data “to get by,” including these false accusations.
“The accusations made by ChatGPT about Walters were false and malicious, expressed in written, printed, or graphic form, with the intent to harm Walters’ reputation and subject him to public hatred, contempt, or ridicule,” the lawsuit states.
Currently, it is unknown whether the case could proceed under U.S. law, as Section 230 protects internet companies from legal liability for information produced by third parties and hosted on their platforms (something that former President Donald Trump sought to eliminate in his crusade against pre-Musk Twitter).
In the end, AI are nothing more than “parrots” that repeat (in a complex manner) the information they have been trained on, and when they don’t know how to respond to a request or lack information, they tend to lie and provide incorrect data. That’s why, if you are going to use a chatbot for a task, always verify the information it provides.
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