"Defamed By ChatGPT": US Law Professor Claims AI Chatbot Falsely Accused Him Of Sexual Assault

OpenAI's chatbot ChatGPT falsely accused a US law professor by including him in a generated list of legal scholars who had sexually harassed someone. In a series of Twitter posts, Professor Jonathan Turley from George Washington University claimed that he was falsely accused by ChatGPT of assaulting students on a trip he "never took" while working at a school he "never taught at". 

"ChapGPT relied on a cited Post article that was never written and quotes a statement that was never made by the newspaper," Mr Turley wrote. 

...I learned that ChatGPT falsely reported on a claim of sexual harassment that was never made against me on a trip that never occurred while I was on a faculty where I never taught. ChapGPT relied on a cited Post article that was never written and quotes a statement that was…

— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) April 6, 2023

Separately, in a blog post, the professor claimed that as part of a study, a lawyer had reportedly asked the AI chatbot to generate a list of legal scholars who had committed sexual harassment. ChatGPTreturned a list that included Mr Turley's name, falsely accusing him of making sexually suggestive comments and attempting to touch a student during a class trip to Alaska, citing a fabricated article in the Post that it said was from 2018. 

Mr Turley noted that no such article existed, something echoed by the Post as well. "What is most striking is that this false accusation was not just generated by AI but ostensibly based on a Post article that never existed," Mr Turley said.

"When first contacted, I found the accusation comical. After some reflection, it took on a more menacing meaning," he wrote in his blog.

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Further, the professor also highlighted some of the accuracy and reliability issues with AI chatbots like ChatGPT. "Yesterday, President Joe Biden declared that 'it remains to be seen' whether Artificial Intelligence (AI) is 'dangerous.' I would beg to differ," he tweeted, adding, "You can be defamed by AI and these companies merely shrug that they try to be accurate. In the meantime, their false accounts metastasize across the Internet."

Mr Truley also noted that ChatGPT wasn't the only bot who made the false claim. According to him, Microsoft's Bing Chatbot also repeated these baseless claims. 

It is not clear why the AI chatbot would smear the professor's name, however, Mr Truley believes that "AI algorithms are no less biased and flawed than the people who program them".