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It was only a matter of time before ChatGPT—an artificial intelligence tool that generates responses based on user text prompts—was threatened with its first defamation lawsuit. That happened last month, Reuters reported today, when an Australian regional mayor, Brian Hood, sent a letter on March 21 to the tool’s developer, OpenAI, announcing his plan to sue the company for ChatGPT’s alleged role in spreading false claims that he had gone to prison for bribery.
To avoid the landmark lawsuit, Hood gave OpenAI 28 days to modify ChatGPT’s responses and stop the tool from spouting disinformation.
According to Hood’s legal team, ChatGPT could seriously damage the mayor’s reputation by falsely claiming that Hood had been convicted for taking part in a foreign bribery scandal in the early 2000s while working for a subsidiary of the Reserve Bank of Australia. Hood had worked for a subsidiary, Note Printing Australia, but rather than being found guilty of bribery, Hood was the one who notified authorities about the bribes. Reuters reported that Hood was never charged with any crimes, but ChatGPT seems to have confused the facts when generating some responses to text prompts inquiring about Hood's history.
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