Georgia radio host Mark Walters has filed a libel lawsuit against OpenAI’s parent company after its AI chatbot, ChatGPT, claimed he was involved in an embezzlement case. When a journalist asked ChatGPT for a summary of legal case The Second Amendment Foundation v. Robert Ferguson, the chatbot allegedly responded that Walters was accused of embezzling money from the foundation. However, Walters had no involvement in the case or official role with the foundation and the claims made about him were false. The lawsuit claims that the chatbot published libelous material regarding Walters, however, the reality is that Walters may not win the case, as the false information wasn’t used in the eventual article.
OpenAI has acknowledged the logical mistakes made by even the most advanced AI models in a blog post. Following the lawsuit against ChatGPT, OpenAI said it was working on process supervision as a solution to prevent such errors, and better reward AI models for detecting hallucinations. While Walters is unlikely to emerge victorious, his case may be the first of many in which individuals seek legal consequences for false claims made by AI.
