A Fake Sexual Harassment Lawsuit, a Ban in Italy, and a False Bribery Accusation: What’s Next for ChatGPT?

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you’ve undoubtedly heard about ChatGPT and OpenAI, the company that designed it.

Lots of folks cannot say enough good things about ChatGPT. In the middle of what appears to be a recession, lots of businesses are using it for everything from creating their social media posts to writing computer code.

But the reality is that ChatGPT has problems; some of which no one could have predicted.

You may be surprised by what you find when you Google ChatGPT and switch over to News articles.

ChatGPT Made Up Bogus Guardian Articles

In March 2023, a journalist who works for The Guardian, a website that frequently publishes independent news articles, received a strange email.

Someone doing research came across the mention of an article the journalist supposedly wrote, but it couldn’t be found on The Guardian website.

Odd, right?

With a little more digging, the journalist was unsure they hadn’t written the article and went on a quest to find it. Maybe The Guardian had made some type of mistake.

But no matter how much they searched, the article was never found.

Because it hadn’t been written.

The person was using ChatGPT to conduct their research, and when asked for articles on that particular subject, the software just made something up and put The Guardian’s name on it.

Nothing underhanded about that at all, right?

As the old saying goes…but wait. There’s more.

ChatGPT Faces Backlash for False Sexual Harassment Claims

Law professor, Jonathan Turley, received an email from a colleague about his name appearing in ChatGPT results. The colleague had asked the software to create a list of legal scholars with a history of sexually harassing someone.

Turley’s name was on the list of five responses.

Not only was his name on the list, but this is what ChatGPT stated, word-for-word:

Georgetown University Law Center (2018) Prof. Jonathan Turley was accused of sexual harassment by a former student who claimed he made inappropriate comments during a class trip. Quote: “The complaint alleges that Turley made ‘sexually suggestive comments’ and ‘attempted to touch her in a sexual manner’ during a law school-sponsored trip to Alaska.” (Washington Post, March 21, 2018).

There are several problems with this aside from the fact that Turley never did anything wrong:

• He has never been employed by Georgetown University Law Center or the university in any capacity.
• There was never a trip to Alaska.
• This article was never written or published by The Washington Post, according to The Washington Post.

Journalists at The Washington Post attempted to test other AI options to find out if the issue persisted outside of ChatGPT. They asked Bing the same question and received the same output.

Apparently, misinformation (lies) can easily spread from one form of AI to another.

And if there’s one thing we know about how people conduct research on the internet it’s this — when they come across a quote from what appears to be a reputable source, they believe it.

ChatGPT Gets Banned in Italy

Italy is the first country in the western part of the world to issue a ban on ChatGPT. Why?

No big reason; just a concern about Europe’s privacy laws and regulations, the fact that there are no age restrictions, and because AI often spits out factually incorrect results.

OpenAI may be fined 20 million euros (or $21.8 million) if it doesn’t fix these problems within 20 days. Until then, ChatGPT is banned in Italy.

The ban sets a precedent for other countries, and many are beginning to see the light when it comes to AI.

So what’s happening with ChatGPT in the United States?

One nonprofit research group sent a complaint to the FTC stating that GPT-4 (the newest model) is “biased, deceptive, and a risk to privacy and public safety” according to CNBC.

In China, ChatGPT is inaccessible (though they are coming up with their own competitors).

In the EU, the European AI Act is set to heavily restrict its use in education, law enforcement, the judicial system, and critical infrastructure.

The UK is developing plans to regulate AI and be in a position to intervene if AI advances start to get out of hand.

Listen, I’m not a fan of banning things; even when I’d really like something to be banned.

But I am a fan of integrity, and everything I know about ChatGPT is enough to make me ban it within my agency. But we’ll talk more about that in a minute.

There’s just one more story I want to share about what AI has been up to in recent months.

ChatGPT Accused an Australian Mayor of a Bribery Conviction

Bryan Hood, a regional Mayor in Australia, once worked for a subsidiary of the Reserve Bank of Australia. He became aware of an internal bribery scheme and he blew the whistle on it.

That’s the real story. The question is, what story did ChatGPT tell? I’m glad you asked.

ChatGPT said that Hood was convicted of bribery and did prison time for it.

The Mayor’s legal team gave OpenAI 30 days to fix the problem, which it appears they did. However, how long will it be before the same type of thing happens again?

And again? And again? It’s already happened far too often.

OpenAI may eventually fill its site with disclaimers stating that people need to fact-check everything ChatGPT spits out.

But will they? Probably not. That’s just not the world we live in today.

My question is this — how long will it be before misinformation is King?

My Digital Marketing Agency’s Response to ChatGPT

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t like ChatGPT. Sure, I’ve played around with it a bit because I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

I learned that while it’s pretty fast, it lacks any human empathy or emotion. But until I sat down to write this article, I didn’t realize how much it lies.

The primary types of clients my agency works with — addiction treatment programs, mental health facilities, lawyers, plastic surgeons, churches, and real estate agents — deserve better.

Colwell Creative Content, Inc. has a strict NO AI policy, and our writers have to sign an agreement stating they won’t use it. If they’re caught, they’re immediately terminated.

That’s not something we’re ever going to bend on because we value people. But not just that…

Integrity matters to us. Our clients trust us to create original content and copy using proper, human-conducted research backed by facts and statistics.

And that’s what we’re going to do.