ChatGPT has caught the world's attention with its ability to instantly generate human-sounding text, jokes and poems, and even pass university exams.
Another of the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot's characteristics, however, is its tendency to make things up entirely - and it could get OpenAI, the company behind it, in legal trouble.
An Australian mayor has indeed threatened to file the first defamation lawsuit against OpenAI unless it corrects ChatGPT's false claims that he was convicted of paying bribes and sentenced to 30 months in jail.
In reality, Brian Hood was never charged with any crime and he was actually the whistleblower who helped uncover an international bribery scandal linked to the Reserve Bank of Australia in the early 2000s.
He told Euronews Next he was giving OpenAI an opportunity to correct this, but if nothing was done he would likely sue the service, which was launched in November last year.
Hood, who was elected that same month as mayor of Hepburn Shire, 120 km northwest of Melbourne, became concerned about his reputation when members of the public told him ChatGPT had falsely named him as a guilty party in the scandal.
He said this experience caused him extreme distress, especially as an elected official.
"I was really shocked. I couldn't believe it. I had to read it and read it again and look at it and put in another inquiry because I just was not...
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