Australia may play host to the first-ever defamation lawsuit against an AI after one of the country's mayors threatened to sue ChatGPT's creators after the chatbot falsely stated that he had been convicted in a bribery scandal.
The man, Brian Hood, serves as mayor of Hepburn Shire and was notified by acquaintances that ChatGPT was falsely asserting that he had been a guilty party in a scandal involving the Reserve Bank of Australia more than a decade ago, Reuters reported Wednesday.
The bribery scandal involved the company Note Printing Australia, which did pay bribes to foreign officials in an attempt to generate more business.
Hood worked at NPA at the time but was the person who informed the police of the ongoing bribery scheme, not one of the perpetrators.
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Lawyers representing Hood contacted OpenAI, the company that created and maintains ChatGPT, last month. The lawyers warned the company that they had a month to correct the bot's version of events or face a potential defamation lawsuit.
OpenAI has yet to respond to the warning, however.
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If Hood moves forward with a lawsuit and is successful, he may secure up to $200,000 in damages.
ChatGPT has caused widespread alarm even in the tech community, with some executives warning that the industry should tread more carefully regarding the potent technology.
Billionaire Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and other major tech figures expressed their worries in a public letter last month, calling on AI developers to "immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4."
"Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable," the letter said.
