Mark Walters, a radio broadcaster in Georgia, filed a lawsuit against OpenAI after ChatGPT produced a fictitious legal summary accusing him of theft and fraud.
According to Bloomberg Law, the first-of-its-kind case comes as generative AI programmes face heightened scrutiny over their ability to spread misinformation and "hallucinate" false outputs, including fake legal precedent.
Mark Walters said in his Georgia state court suit that the chatbot provided the false complaint to Fred Riehl, the editor-in-chief of the gun publication AmmoLand, who was reporting on a real life legal case playing out in Washington state.
According to Forbes magazine, the fake legal summary is likely the result of a relatively frequent problem with generative AI known as hallucinations. This happens when a language model generates completely false information without any warning, sometimes occurring in the middle of otherwise accurate text.
The hallucinated content can appear convincing, as it may superficially resemble real information and may also include bogus citations and made-up sources.
Meanwhile, the chief scientist for Facebook-owner Meta said on Tuesday that generative AI, the technology behind ChatGPT, was already at a dead end, instead promising new artificial intelligence resembling human rationality.
"Today, AI and machine learning really sucks. Humans have common sense, machines don't," Yann LeCun told reporters at a Meta launch event in Paris.
LeCun spoke as Meta announced its latest AI project, called image-based Joint Embedding Predictive Architecture, or JEPA.
The project seeks to move beyond ChatGPT-like generative AI and give machines the ability to conceptualise abstract ideas and not just regurgitate what exists online.
"Generative models are the past, we will abandon them in favour of joint embedding predictive architecture," LeCun said, touting the Meta project he will lead.
