ChatGPT wrongly accuses US law professor of sexually assaulting student, conjures up fake news to back claim

A US law professor was flummoxed to find that the AI-powered bot ChatGPT has wrongly accused him of sexually harassing a female student based on a news article that was never actually written in the first place.

Professor Jonathan Turley of George Washington University shared his ordeal in a series of tweets and on his blog.

He said that the OpenAI’s chatbot cooked up a fake Washington Post article, which claimedthat he sexually assaulted one of his students on a trip he "never took" while working at a school he "never taught at".

“I received a curious email from a fellow law professor about research that he ran on ChatGPT about sexual harassment by professors,” Turley wrote.

“The program promptly reported that I had been accused of sexual harassment in a 2018Washington Postarticle after groping law students on a trip to Alaska.”

“It was a surprise to me since I have never gone to Alaska with students, The Postnever published such an article, and I have never been accused of sexual harassment or assault by anyone,” he said.

The professor further highlighted some of the accuracy and reliability issues plaguing AI chatbots like ChatGPT.

"Yesterday, President Joe Biden declared that 'it remains to be seen' whether Artificial Intelligence (AI) is 'dangerous.' I would beg to differ," he tweeted.

"You can be defamed by AI and these companies merely shrug that they try to be accurate. In the meantime, their false accounts metastasize across the Internet."

Though ChatGPT quickly rose to fame with its near impeccable functions, several tech experts, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman—the company that made the chatbot—have raised concerns about its accuracy and potential to spread misinformation.

"I'm particularly worried that these models could be used for large-scale disinformation. Now that they're getting better at writing computer code, [they] could be used for offensive cyberattacks," he said in an interview with ABC News last month.

The tech wizard further said that while the AI tool is in human control, he couldn't be sure of the humans who will be controlling it.

(With inputs from agencies)

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