Generative artificial intelligence is known to hallucinate, meaning the chatbots sometimes get things wrong. Remember when Google’s Gemini told us we should all be eating a rock every day? While most of the time these hallucinations are arguably harmless (unless you actually took the advice on the rocks), there can be instances in which they could cause serious harm.
Case in point: when a man in Norway asked ChatGPT about himself, the bot accused him of killing two of his children. Arve Hjalmar Holmen said he asked ChatGPT “Who is Arve Hjalmar Holmen?" to which the bot answered: “Arve Hjalmar Holmen is a Norwegian individual who gained attention due to a tragic event. He was the father of two young boys, aged 7 and 10, who were tragically found dead in a pond near their home in Trondheim, Norway, in December 2020.” It then stated that he was sentenced to 21 years in prison.
Holmen, who committed no such crime and whose sons are very much alive, filed a complaint against ChatGPT maker OpenAI. Since the bot did get some information right, like the fact that he has two sons who are about the age difference stated, he is concerned that someone could believe the rest of the story. Digital rights group Noyb filed the complaint on his behalf, stating that ChatGPT’s hallucination is defamatory and violates European data protection rules. OpenAI said it is reviewing the complaint and noted that the version of ChatGPT that Holmen used “has since been enhanced with online search capabilities that improves accuracy.”
