In filing a lawsuit many have dubbed “the first of its kind,” a radio host in Georgia is claiming that OpenAI, the company behind the artificial intelligence chat platform “ChatGPT,” is liable for defamation.

The plaintiff, Mark Walters, filed a complaint last week in the Superior Court of Gwinnett County, Georgia, alleging that ChatGPT published “false,” “malicious” and “libelous matter” about Walters to a third-party journalist, Fred Riehl.

According to the complaint, Riehl, a ChatGPT subscriber, was reportedly using the service to research a federal lawsuit in Washington brought by the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) against the Washington attorney general and the Washington assistant attorney general. Riehl asked the chatbot to provide a summary of the allegations from SAF’s complaint, and the chatbot replied that Walters was a defendant in the case, served as SAF’s treasurer and chief financial officer, and was accused of defrauding and embezzling funds from the organization.

However, every statement that ChatGPT made about Walters was apparently false. Walters notes that he was not a defendant in SAF’s case, he never served as its treasurer or chief financial officer, and he was not accused of defrauding the organization.

 Walters also alleges that when Riehl specifically asked ChatGPT to provide support for its statements about Walters, by sharing both a portion of the complaint and the complaint in its entirety, the bot obliged. But the results it provided were also completely false, apparently bearing “no resemblance to the actual complaint” Riehl was writing about.

To his credit, Riehl contacted one of the actual parties to the lawsuit, who confirmed that Walters was not involved in the matter at all. Riehl did not publish any of the allegedly defamatory statements about Walters, and Walters does not name Riehl as a defendant in his case against OpenAI.

However, the facts at issue in the case highlight the potential hazards for users of AI chatbots. Indeed, whereas the suit may mark the first time a court may consider whether a company providing AI-tools could be liable under defamation law, the law seems pretty clear that users of AI-tools could incur serious risks. For example, under the republication liability rule followed by many states, including Illinois, the republisher of a defamatory statement from another source (even a bot) could be liable for defamation, even if the republisher says “I got this [false information] from ChatGPT,” or from a seemingly legitimate source that a bot actually fabricated.  See, e.g., Brennan v. Kadner, 351 Ill. App. 3d 963, 970, 814 N.E.2d 951, 959 (2004) (discussing the republication rule in Illinois). Of course, users who are sued for republishing such information may be able to rely on existing defenses under the First Amendment or Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, but the potential risks in relying on chatbots are concerning.

And this is not the first time AI programs have reportedly shared false information with users. In April, a mayor in Australia publicly mulled the idea of suing OpenAI if the company did not address ChatGPT’s inaccurate claims implicating him in a bribery scandal. Around the same time, a law professor at The George Washington University published an op-ed describing how the service falsely accused him of sexually harassing his students. And just this past week, a personal injury attorney in New York was forced to explain his actions after mistakenly relying on ChatGPT for legal research and citing entirely nonexistent caselaw in a brief.

In response to these concerns, companies with artificial intelligence chatbots have acknowledged issues with their services responding to user prompts with “hallucinations” (an industry term). OpenAI, for example, recently said in a post published last month that it would train models to better detect hallucinations going forward.

It will be interesting to see how OpenAI responds to Walters’s lawsuit and whether ChatGPT, and others like it, will become more factually accurate as the technology develops. In the interim, however, users should be especially cautious about chatbox “hallucinations” resulting in real-world liability.

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Photo of Elizabeth N. Hall Elizabeth N. Hall

Elizabeth N. Hall is a Shareholder in the firm’s Labor and Employment practice area and serves as the Chicago office chair of the firm’s women’s affinity group, “Women at Vedder Empowering Success” (WAVES).

Ms. Hall represents a wide range of employers before state

Elizabeth N. Hall is a Shareholder in the firm’s Labor and Employment practice area and serves as the Chicago office chair of the firm’s women’s affinity group, “Women at Vedder Empowering Success” (WAVES).

Ms. Hall represents a wide range of employers before state and federal courts and administrative agencies, as well as in arbitral forums, defending them against various claims, including single plaintiff and class allegations of employment discrimination, failure to accommodate disabilities, sexual harassment, wrongful and retaliatory discharge, breach of contract and violations of the FMLA and wage and hour laws. Ms. Hall has successfully argued procedural and employment discrimination issues in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and has particular expertise in managing electronic discovery teams in complex litigation.

A significant portion of Ms. Hall’s daily practice involves providing practical advice to employers regarding risk management; effective employee discipline and discharge; conducting workplace investigations; accommodating disabilities and pregnancy; workplace violence; managing leaves of absence and complying with FMLA and state leave requirements; workforce reductions; drafting and reviewing employment, recruitment and staffing agreements; policy and handbook development; wage and hour compliance; and state and federal employment laws. She frequently trains clients and employer groups on many of these topics.  Ms. Hall also has extensive experience drafting and negotiating severance, settlement and conciliation agreements on behalf of employer clients.

In 2017 and 2018, Ms. Hall was recommended by The Legal 500 United States for the Labor and Employment Disputes (including collective actions): Defense category. In 2018, she was named to the Crain’s Custom Media “Chicago Notable Women Lawyers” list. She also was selected as an Emerging Lawyer, an affiliate of Leading Lawyers, from 2015 to 2019. From 2010 to 2015, Ms. Hall was selected for inclusion as an Illinois Rising Star, and Super Lawyers named her one of the “Top Women Attorneys in Illinois” in the “Rising Star” category in 2013 and 2014.