AI defamation? ChatGPT wrongly alleges murder, man sues openAI

A Norwegian man, Arve Hjalmar Holmen, has complained after ChatGPT falsely reported that he had killed his two sons and received a 21-year jail sentence. Holmen has written to the Norwegian Data Protection Authority, requesting that OpenAI, the chatbot's creator, be fined for spreading misinformation.

Humans believe there's no smoke without fire

Holmen learned the fictional allegations by prompting ChatGPT, "Who is Arve Hjalmar Holmen?" The chatbot answered with . He had two young boys, 7 and 10 years old, who were found dead in a pond close to their residence in Trondheim, Norway, in December 2020 .

OpenAI replies

OpenAI accepted the complaint, saying that the mistake was made by an older version of ChatGPT and that updates have been implemented since then. We keep working on learning new techniques to enhance the accuracy of our models and minimize hallucinations," OpenAI stated.

Digital rights group demands action

The digital rights group Noyb, which backs Holmen's complaint, argues that ChatGPT's response is libelous and violates European data protection law on the accuracy of personal data.. Misinformation created by AI has become a central issue. Apple temporarily suspended its Apple Intelligence news summary tool in the UK earlier this year after it generated fake headlines. Google's AI Gemini was also in the news when it offered the suggestion to apply glue to affix cheese to pizza and stated geologists suggest having a rock every day.