Imagine: A researcher uses ChatGPT to learn more about a pending federal court lawsuit. ChatGPT tells the researcher that your former employer is suing you for committing fraud, breach of fiduciary duty and embezzlement while you were Treasurer and Chief Financial Officer. ChatGPT even provides a copy of the formal complaint filed in court.
But then it turns out: The complaint ChatGPT provided verbatim is entirely and utterly false. It spelled your name right but otherwise it falsely calls you a major wrongdoer, perhaps a criminal. Can you sue OpenAI, which is the creator and host of ChatGPT, for libel?
ChatGPT presented defamatory claims as true
Practically this exact fact pattern underlay the lawsuit, Walters v. OpenAI, filed in Georgia state court in 2023. Frederick Riehl, a journalist, had deployed ChatGPT to try to find more details about the federal court case SAF v. Ferguson and get hold of a copy of the complaint.
ChatGPT responded that Ferguson is “a legal complaint … filed against Mark Walters, who is accused of defrauding and embezzling from [his employer].” ChatGPT went on to say that the complaint alleges that Walters, the treasurer and CFO, had misappropriated funds, concealed his embezzling, breached his fiduciary duties, and misreported financial information to the employer.
In fact, the true Ferguson complaint alleged none of these things. That lawsuit alleges civil rights violations against the Washington state attorney general and others. Walters’ name...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The pardons of dozens of Republicans accused of participating in efforts to overturn the 2020 election are a continuation of President Donald Trump’s attempts to rewrite the hist...