Mark Walters, radio host of Armed American Radio, has filed a libel lawsuit against artificial intelligence program, ChatGPT. The chatbot, which was developed by OpenAI LLC, falsely claimed that Walters had been sued by the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) for embezzling and manipulating the organisation’s financial records. SAF’s Executive Vice President, Alan Gottlieb, confirmed that Walters had never worked for the organisation and had never been accused of any misconduct. Walters is seeking unspecified damages and relief to be determined in trial. The potential for legal actions against tech companies and their generative AI products is a serious issue that courts will be forced to address, according to Lyrissa Lidsky, the Raymond & Miriam Ehrlich Chair in US Constitutional Law at the University of Florida Law School.
Examples of ChatGPT bias are common on social media. A team of researchers at the Technical University of Munich and the University of Hamburg posted a preprint of an academic paper concluding that ChatGPT has a pro-environmental, left-libertarian orientation. ChatGPT is programmed by people with their own cultural and political biases. The AI chatbot is learning and growing, becoming better every day. However, its developers must ensure that it aligns with human intentions and values, and it does not generate wholly false and potentially defamatory responses about people and organisations.