Of course,,it would be utterly delicious if Chat GPTs summary was, actually, accurate. Grassed by AI

IANAL but it seems obvious to me that the suit should be against the journalist too lazy to do his own journalism....

I think this is more a case of "should I sue a smalltown hack, or a rich mega-global company"

Unless the journalist used a Macbook, then you could sue a $Tn company

Not really... OpenAI shouldn't put out "AI" that consistently spews complete bullshit, and thus, they're justly being sued for it.

The journalist is just guilty of believing it. Hopefully he learns a bit of skepticism.

And I don't see why we're calling it "hallucinations" - why are we sugar-coating it?

"Probably the first defamation suit involving an AI, but will it stick?"

Wasn't there an Australian case a few weeks ago? A small time politician / mayor / something of that kidney? Accused of being on the fiddle when he was allegedly the whistleblower?

Apart from which Mark Walters the thing is hallucinating about, there is also the question of who caused the publication of the allegedly defamatory material - is it OpenAI, or the journalist who ran the prompt? chatGPT wouldn't have produced the material if the journalist hadn't prompted it, after all.

It’s a stupid and lazy journalist who should be fired (like BoJo) for not even pretending to do their job.

And then sued.

Strictly speaking OpenAI has no idea who any particular individual is. There's likely to be many Mark Walters in the US so the only way that it could be associated with this particular one is if this one self-identifies. Which he has done.

Given AI's wide reach and ability to correlate enormous am0unts of information I'd keep relatively quiet and just say "not me, its screwed up again" (as we all know its prone to do). Making noise is drawing attention to one.....probably not a smart move.

You appear to be correct. The only identification of "Mark Walters" given (in all the reports of this that so far found) was that he lives in Georgia and held a role at SAF.

The Mark Walters who is making the complaint is a radio talk host who doesn't claim to have held a post at SAF. If there is any actual reason to connect the two then it isn't being reported.[1]

This Walters wasn't even the first hit for a search on the name plus "Georgia" and when he does show up it is only due to this case. His pro-"gun rights"[2] radio show finally appeared after a bit of scrolling.

Given that, if there *is* a case to be made[3] it can surely only be againt the journalist, the only one who could be caught be the requirement he must "prove that the defendant was at least negligent with respect to the truth or falsity of the allegedly defamatory statements" (because, well, only a human can be negligent) then this looks to me like nothing more thsn an attempt to get publicity for his radio show.

[1] maybe Walters the radio host is is going to argue in court that he is a well-known embezzler, so it must be referring to him?

[2] guns have rights? But does he support the right for two guns of different calibre to co-habit in the same box? Won't somebody think of the ammunition!

[3] which I severely doubt

.. Chat GPT is on magic mushrooms,

It spews out stuff and when you point out the issues, confesses and generates 'alternatives' until you're happy or fed up.

For some things it's no better than the bollocksword generators we used to knock up in BASIC except that when people can't tell the difference it becomes much more insidious.

"According to the complaint, a journalist named Fred Riehl, while he was reporting on a court case, asked ChatGPT for a summary of accusations in a complaint, and provided ChatGPT with the URL of the real complaint for reference"

I thought ChatGPT wasn't able to go out on the Internet to look at stuff and could only reference what was in its database up to 2021? So the fact that this 'journalist' asked it to go and summarize a document on a URL it couldn't see meant it just made up whatever BS it wanted to and they never bothered to check it was correct.

Bingo.

Which is why suing OpenAI is ludicrous - given, from the article:

> Riehl contacted Alan Gottlieb, one of the plaintiffs in the actual Washington lawsuit, about ChatGPT's allegations concerning Walters, and Gottlieb confirmed that they were false.

So the only case for being negligent with the truth would be against Riehl, who either didn't bother learning the basic limitation of ChatGPT *and* contacted Gottlieb to late (basic lack of fact checking) or did so prior to promulgating the incorrect statements and went ahead anyway.

However, given that there is (so far reported) nothing to connect the non-existent Mark Walters to the gun-promoting radio host bringing the case, the whole thing is just a publicity stunt anyway, as Riehl is connected with another gun-related website, ammoland.com

I can't see anywhere this article says that the defamatory speech was published anywhere, and the essence of libel is that something needs to be published.

Unless I'm missing something this is just another "Chat-GPT can produce rubbish" story combined with a "some idiot doesn't understand libel but can find a lawyer who will still happily take their money" story, neither particularly newsworthy of themselves, and the mere juxtaposition doesn't improve the newsworthiness.

> I can't see anywhere this article says that the defamatory speech was published anywhere

Confusing, isn't it?

Since posting (above) I've been doing a bit more searching and I think I'm going to have to change my opinion about the liability of "Fred Riehl"[1] - he *is* a lazy "journalist", as he likes to use ChatGPT to generate his "stories" (although he does admit that in the byline, so that is one thing in his favour[2]).

*But* as far as I can find out, Riehl never actually published any article containing defamatory statements, as we (including myself) have been assuming in the comments here. Instead, it currently looks like all that has actually happened is that Riehl asked ChatGPT and got back a response mentioning a *random* "Mark Walters" and in doing so, it was ChatGPT that was publishing this information!

Now, it appears that Riehl and *a* Mark Walters[3] are buddies in the "pro gun rights"[4] movement - Walters writes[5] for the website and his radio show has been promoted on the website - so *obviously* when ChatGPT talks to Riehl it must be referring to *that* Walters, hence ChatGPT has published defamatory statements about his colleague. All the contacting Gottlieb was to check the facts, just in case his Mark really was a wong'un - or more likely in order to be able to say to the world "look, even Riehl can manage to do this must due diligence, so ChatGPT must be really negligent".

So, ChatGPT is, apparently, "publishing" when it spits out a response and, despite having to retract my previous idea[6] about Riehl (for a new and even worst one, but hey), I still stand by my belief that this is all an attempt to get publicity for two otherwise totally pointless individuals and their ridiculous website and radio show.

[1] His own website and linkedin profile name him "Fredy Riehl" (having both "d"'s may have been too bourgeois for him)

[2] About the only thing so far; maybe he likes fluffy kittens as well?

[3] Hereinafter referred to as "the idiot doing the suing" M'lud

[4] Nope, already made that joke

[5] https://www.ammoland.com/author/markwalters/

[6] Science - we change our ideas as the evidence leads us

IIUC, it is rather that it only generates pseudo-infomation; i.e. text or other content which might *seem* authoritative, but whose various constituent parts, if taken individually, might be true ... or not ... all according to some poorly characterized probabilities.

This sort of thing might be fine as a rough starting point, but it really does need to be checked and corrected in some way before it might be considered trustworthy.

Talking about LLMs, including ChatGPT:

> It’s not that they sometimes “hallucinate”. They hallucinate 100% of the time, it’s just that the training results in the hallucinations having a high chance of being accidentally correct.

A nice way of phrasing the problem, which I'm shamelessly nicking (sorry, I mean "am excerpting a portion of under Fair Rights[1]) from a discussion of this case over at https://reason.com/volokh/2023/06/06/first-ai-libel-lawsuit-filed/?comments=true

[1] Which is an US concept, but as it is a US website I'm ripping off - sorry, there I go again - and The Register now self-identifies as USazian I'm probably alright