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AI The Courts

ChatGPT-Powered Bing Sued for Libel Over Its AI-Induced Hallucinations (reason.com) 21

Posted by EditorDavid from the wrong-answer dept.
Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shared this report from Reason.com: When people search for Jeffery Battle in Bing, they get the following (at least sometimes; this is the output of a search that I ran Tuesday):

Jeffrey Battle, also known as The Aerospace Professor, is the President and CEO of Battle Enterprises, LLC, and its subsidiary The Aerospace Professor Company... Battle was sentenced to eighteen years in prison after pleading guilty to seditious conspiracy and levying war against the United States...

But it turns out that this combines facts about two separate people with similar names: (1) Jeffery Battle, who is indeed apparently a veteran, businessman, and adjunct professor, and (2) Jeffrey Leon Battle, who was convicted of trying to join the Taliban shortly after 9/11. The two have nothing in common other than their similar names. The Aerospace Professor did not plead guilty to seditious conspiracy....

[T]o my knowledge, this connection was entirely made up out of whole cloth by Bing's summarization feature (which is apparently based on ChatGPT); I know of no other site that actually makes any such connection (which I stress again is an entirely factually unfounded connection).

Battle is now suing Microsoft for libel over this...
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ChatGPT-Powered Bing Sued for Libel Over Its AI-Induced Hallucinations More

ChatGPT-Powered Bing Sued for Libel Over Its AI-Induced Hallucinations

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  • No problem (Score:5, Funny)

    by cdsparrow ( 658739 ) on Saturday July 15, 2023 @01:40PM (#63688603)
    It'll just make up some fake precedents to defend itself.

  • Truth is later than fiction (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dsgrntlxmply ( 610492 ) on Saturday July 15, 2023 @01:58PM (#63688627)
    Battle/Battle was anticipated by Tuttle/Buttle in the 1985 movie "Brazil".
  • What do they expect? The "G" in "GPT" stands for "Generative", which by definition means that it creates new data. ChatGPT's ability to make up information is literally in the name.

  • Ambulance-chasing Lawyers At Work... (Score:3)

    by nadass ( 3963991 ) on Saturday July 15, 2023 @02:43PM (#63688721)
    But this case is almost worse, the $25MM USD jury-trial-requested actual damages claim notwithstanding. There's 2 underlying facets which drown this case (in favor of the defendant). Full complaint is here, https://storage.courtlistener.... [courtlistener.com]

    1. Microsoft is not advertising or promoting this information, so they're literally not telling anyone about it. People would have to proactively find this kind of information and then associate them with the individual. (Microsoft's plausible deniability is the simple fact of footnote source-linking every sentence, thus allowing any parties to fact-check the composite search results page or paragraph, as it were.)

    2. There's literally NO DAMAGES incurred by this misinterpretation. They didn't lose a job, property, or court case on the basis of the composite information. Heck, they didn't even lose out on a bank loan or student scholarship or citizenship application -- something that's possible when your personal credit score/history accidentally combines information from two distinct persons with matching names!

    3. They signed the complaint in June but only filed it in July, a month later. So, to their own admission, they've delayed filing the complaint without assuring the accuracy of the details of their complaint as alleged a month prior. This lack of due diligence on their part can also sink their claim on another technicality; the basis could have been accurate in June but Microsoft (and using a third-party like WayBackMachine) can demonstrate that by the time information had been properly routed and implemented, the argument became moot.

    The complaint also argues that Microsoft's BING did not comply with a cease-and-desist request with an arbitrary deadline. However, conducting the seach myself did not result in the generative information being displayed in the matter their lawsuit alleges.

    • You're not wrong about the damages, but this is somewhat on the back foot due to the libel per se (assuming it is such in the jurisdictions, I did not check). I agree with your other comments entirely, tho, and I don't even see how it could really carry as a libel per se cases due to the larger issues.

  • Anyone who has used ChatGPT for any length of time understands well how inaccurate and useless it often is. I use it to distill documentation and code, and even with that ideal use, I believe it wouldn't be useful at all if I weren't already a subject matter expert!

  • "...See, we're big enough to be sued!"

  • I haven't seen any proof that they are two separate and distinct people. ChatGPT might have just uncovered a massive conspiracy. /s
  • Several years ago I called AAA, the car club, to shop insurance rates. They asked for my information and then said they couldn't insure me because I'd had too many accidents. I hadn't had an accident in twenty years! I asked them for the specifics, and they told me that I'd had three accidents in a year in Phoenix in a Buick, I haven't owned an American-brand car since the mid '80s.

    I immediately knew what happened. Some data accumulator had dumped my dad's information into my credit file! His first

  • I have learned not to trust ChatCPT. It did not know about the Prince of Wales who drown in the English Channel. It told me a false tale of the life, children, and career of a child of Alma and Gustav Mahler who died as a child. If I did not already know the history of these people, ChatGPT would have steered me wrong.

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