Will ChatGPT’s hallucinations be allowed to ruin your life?
Bribery. Embezzlement. Terrorism. What if an AI chatbot accused you of doing something terrible? When bots make mistakes, the false claims can ruin lives, and the legal questions around these issues remain murky.
That's according to several people suing the biggest AI companies. But chatbot makers hope to avoid liability, and a string of legal threats has revealed how easy it might be for companies to wriggle out of responsibility for allegedly defamatory chatbot responses.
Earlier this year, an Australian regional mayor, Brian Hood, made headlines by becoming the first person to accuse ChatGPT's maker, OpenAI, of defamation. Few seemed to notice when Hood resolved his would-be landmark AI defamation case out of court this spring, but the quiet conclusion to this much-covered legal threat offered a glimpse of what could become a go-to strategy for AI companies seeking to avoid defamation lawsuits.
