OpenAI has been hit with its first defamation lawsuit after ChatGPT fabricated legal accusations against a radio host.
Mark Walters, a radio host in Georgia, is suing OpenAI in what appears to be the first defamation lawsuit against the company over false information generated by ChatGPT.
The chat AI stated that Walters had been accused of defrauding and embezzling funds from a non-profit organization. ChatGPT generated the information in response to a request from a third party, a journalist named Fred Riehl.
According to the lawsuit, Riehl asked ChatGPT to summarize a real federal court case by linking to an online PDF. In response, ChatGPT generated a false summary of the case — detailed and convincing, but wrong in many aspects — including false allegations against Walters.
Riehl never published the false information ChatGPT generated but checked the details with another party. It is unknown from the facts of the case how Walters came to find out about the fabricated…
