An Australian mayor plans to sue ChatGPT for libel if OpenAI doesn’t rectify the situation after the software gave him a criminal past and time behind bars for corruption.
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It would be the first-ever libel suit against the automated text software, ‘The Guardian’ reported on Thursday.
Last November, Brian Hood, mayor of Hepburn Shire, located northwest of Melbourne in Australia, learned that the software portrayed him as one of the culprits in a corruption scandal involving a subsidiary of the Reserve Bank of Australia at the beginning of the 2000s.
According to the software, the mayor even served time in prison for his fake crime. It was members of the public who approached him to tell him that his name was being dragged through the mud by artificial intelligence.
Because if he was indeed involved in the scandal, it is because he was the person who would have informed the authorities of the payment of bribes to foreign officials in exchange for contracts, his lawyers would have indicated according to the British media.
“It’s really hard for someone to look behind all of this and say ‘how did the algorithm come to this answer?’ It’s really opaque,” said James Naughton, a partner at law firm Gordon Legal.
If the mistake is not rectified after 28 days, he plans to press ahead with a lawsuit and claim the equivalent of approximately $180,000.