ChatGPT falsely accuses Australian mayor of bribery

Occurred: April 2023

Australian mayor Brian Hood was wrongly accused of bribery and spending time in prison by ChatGPT, resulting in Hood suing OpenAI for defamation.  

ChatGPT had falsely named Hood as involved in a foreign bribery scandal in the early 2000s; however, Hood's lawyers said he had notified authorities about the bribes and had never been charged with a crime, let alone spent time in prison. 

Hood said that he would sue Open AI for defamation unless it fixed the error within 28 days. The lawsuit would be the first of its kind in the world.

According to Reuters, Australian defamation damages payouts are generally capped around AUD $400,000 (USD 269,360).

System 🤖

Operator: OpenAI; Microsoft
Developer: OpenAI; Microsoft

Country: Australia

Sector: Multiple; Govt - municipal

Purpose: Provide information, communicate

Technology: Chatbot; NLP/text analysis; Neural network; Deep learning; Machine learning; Reinforcement learning
Issue: Accuracy/reliability; Defamation; Mis/disinformation

Transparency: Governance; Black box

Page info
Type: Incident
Published: April 2023
Last updated: November 2023