A regional Australian mayor stated he would possibly sue OpenAI if it does no longer proper ChatGPT’s false claims that he had served time in jail for bribery, in what will be the first defamation lawsuit towards the automatic textual content carrier.
Brian Hood, who used to be elected mayor of Hepburn Shire, 120km (75 miles) northwest of Melbourne, ultimate November, become keen on his recognition when participants of the general public advised him ChatGPT had falsely named him as a to blame birthday celebration in a overseas bribery scandal involving a subsidiary of the Reserve Bank of Australia within the early 2000s.
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Hood did paintings for the subsidiary, Note Printing Australia, however used to be the one that notified government about cost of bribes to overseas officers to win foreign money printing contracts, and used to be by no means charged with a criminal offense, attorneys representing him stated.
The attorneys stated they despatched a letter of outrage to ChatGPT proprietor OpenAI on March 21, which gave OpenAI 28 days to mend the mistakes about their shopper or face a imaginable defamation lawsuit.
OpenAI, which is primarily based in San Francisco, had no longer but spoke back to Hood’s prison letter, the attorneys stated. OpenAI didn’t reply to a Reuters e-mail outdoor trade hours.
If Hood sues, it will most likely be the primary time an individual has sued the landlord of ChatGPT for claims made through the automatic language product which has turn out to be wildly widespread since its release ultimate yr. Microsoft Corp built-in ChatGPT into its seek engine Bing in February.
A Microsoft spokesperson used to be no longer right away to be had for remark.
“It would potentially be a landmark moment in the sense that it’s applying this defamation law to a new area of artificial intelligence and publication in the IT space,” James Naughton, a spouse at Hood’s lawfirm Gordon Legal, advised Reuters.
“He’s an elected official, his reputation is central to his role,” Naughton stated. Hood trusted a public file of shining a mild on company misconduct, “so it makes a difference to him if people in his community are accessing this material”.
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Australian defamation damages payouts are in most cases capped round A$400,000 ($269,360). Hood didn’t know the precise quantity of people that had accessed the false details about him – a determinant of the payout dimension – however the nature of the defamatory statements used to be critical sufficient that he would possibly declare greater than A$200,000, Naughton stated.
If Hood information a lawsuit, it will accuse ChatGPT of giving customers a false sense of accuracy through failing to incorporate footnotes, Naughton stated.
“It’s very difficult for somebody to look behind that to say ‘how does the algorithm come up with that answer?'” stated Naughton. “It’s very opaque.”