China made headlines when it made its first public arrest of a man misusing the popular chatbot ChatGPT. The chatbot became viral for its capability to generate human-like written text. The man was identified by his surname Hong and is accused of using the chatbot to create fake news about a train crash which killed nine people in the Gansu province, as confirmed via the Kongtong district’s official WeChat account.
In January 2021, China’s new regulation for deep fake technology was implemented to prevent misuse of the technology, which can alter voice and face data. Despite being blocked in China, the chatbot was accessed via virtual private networks.
The fake news was posted on the 25th of April and was part of a network of 21 blog-style accounts on Baidu; China’s version of Google. Once the investigation was initiated, it was found that the multiple fake articles were viewed more than 15,00 times. This led the Gansu police to an independent company owned by Hong in Shenzen. During the investigation Hong owned up to utilising ChatGPT to generate the content and post it online.
The suspect is facing the charge of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” which is punishable by a maximum of 10 years of prison sentence. The investigation is undergoing.
About ChatGPT
ChatGPT is AI chatbot developed to generate human-like written text from user input. It went viral for its usage when it first launched and caused a quite a stir. Despite being blocked in some parts of China, it is still accessed through various workarounds such as virtual private networks.
About Hong
Hong was identified by his surname and is accused of misuse of a popular AI chatbot ChatGPT. He used the chatbot to generate the fake news about a fatal train crash which killed nine people in Gansu province. He owned up to utilising ChatGPT to generate the content and post it online when confronted by the authorities. He is currently detained and facing the charge of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” which is punishable by a maximum of 10 years of prison sentence.
