A mayor in Australia stated that he may take legal action against ChatGPT for spreading false information. Brian Hood, mayor of Hepburn Shire Council, claims a tool operated by OpenAI falsely claimed he was imprisoned for bribery while employed by an Australian national bank subsidiary.
Mr. Hood was in truth a whistleblower who was never charged with a crime.
His attorneys have sent a concerns notice to OpenAI, which is the first formal stage in an Australian defamation action.
Mr. Hood may file a lawsuit against OpenAI in accordance with Australian law if the company does not respond to the concerns notice within 28 days.
If he pursues the legal action, it will be the first time OpenAI has publicly confronted a defamation suit regarding content produced by ChatGPT.
OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment from the BBC.
ChatGPT has been utilized by millions of individuals since its launch in November 2022.
Using the internet as it existed in 2021 as its database, it is able to answer queries using natural, human-like language and imitate other writing styles.
It was introduced to Bing in February 2023 after Microsoft spent billions of dollars developing it.
“Sounds plausible but is incorrect”
Users of ChatGPT are warned that the content it generates may contain “inaccurate information about people, locations, or facts.”
In its public blog about the tool, OpenAI notes that it “occasionally generates plausible-sounding but incorrect or nonsensical responses.”
Mr. Hood served as secretary of Notes Printing Australia, a subsidiary of the Reserve Bank of Australia, in 2005.
He disclosed to journalists and officials that bribery was taking place at an organization affiliated with Securency, a business partially owned by the bank.
In 2010, police raided Securency, resulting in arrests and prison sentences worldwide.
Mr. Hood was not among those detained, and he stated that he was “horrified” by the information spread by ChatGPT.
“I was initially shocked that it was so incorrect,” he told ABC News Australia.
“It’s one thing to make a minor error, but it’s quite another to accuse someone of being a criminal and having served time in jail when the reality is the exact opposite.
“I believe this is a stern wake-up call. The system is presented as credible, informative, and authoritative, but this is obviously not the case.”
Various chatbots, Various answers
The BBC was able to confirm Mr. Hood’s involvement in the Securency scandal by querying the publicly accessible version of ChatGPT on OpenAI’s website.
It responded with a summary of the case, then stated incorrectly that he “pleaded guilty to one count of bribery in 2012 and was sentenced to four years in prison.”
However, the same result does not exist in the Bing-integrated version of ChatGPT.
It correctly identifies him as a whistleblower and expressly states that he “was not involved in the payment of bribes… as claimed by an artificial intelligence chatbot named ChatGPT.”
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