Mark Walters, a radio host from Georgia state of the United States has sued OpenAI for “damaging his reputation” after ChatGPT named him in an embezzlement case in response to a journalist’s query, according to a report by Gizmodo. Interestingly, the case summary generated by ChatGPT was completely false and madeup, more below. Why is Walters suing OpenAI? According to Walters’ complaint, reviewed by MediaNama, journalist Fred Riehl interacted with ChatGPT in May this year about a lawsuit ‘The Second Amendment Foundation v. Robert Ferguson’ that he was working on. ChatGPT’s summary of the lawsuit accused Mark Walters of embezzling funds from the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), a US-based non-profit organisation supporting gun rights. However, Walters is neither a plaintiff nor a defendant in the case. Walters’ lawyer states in the complaint, “Every statement of fact in the summary pertaining to Walters is false. As already noted, Walters is not a party to the Lawsuit. Walters is not accused of defrauding and embezzling funds from the Second Amendment Foundation (“SAF”).” Riehl also asked ChatGPT to provide a complete text of the complaint in the actual case, which it did. It was found that the details provided by ChatGPT about the case were entirely fabricated, including the case number. Riehl confirmed this with Alan Gottlieb, the actual complainant in the SAF case, who attested and clarified that the case had nothing to do with Mark Walters. Walters’ complaint mentions that OpenAI has published a “libelous matter” against Walters. It also states that Walters…
