Here’s a regularly updated list of complaints, lawsuits and civil or government opposition to the ChatGPT AI tool, or ” ChatTNT “, as I prefer to call it, for its destructive capabilities- alongside its useful ones, as always.
Yoshua Bengio, one of the three AI pionneers from Canada and head of the MILA (Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms) in Montreal, compared chatGPT to nuclear technology.
April 2023 ChaptGPT Lawsuits and Actions:
- Australian lawsuit from a Mayor for false information from ChatGPT
ChatGPT falsely identified Brian Hood as guilty party in a foreign bribery scandal. In reality he blew the whistle on the illegal scheme. Read: Australian mayor prepares world’s first defamation lawsuit over ChatGPT content in The Guardian.
Some of the biggest names in AI are raising the alarm about its impact if deployed without caution, as with ChatGPT. In an open letter published Tuesday, more than 1,100 signatories called for a moratorium on state-of-the-art AI development. Read: AI leaders (and Elon Musk) urge all labs to press pause on powerful AI on Vox.com here.
- A Digital Rights group in the US asks the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) to regulate ChatGPT
A prominent AI ethics organization submitted a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission this week urging the agency to investigate ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and halt its development of future large language learning models. The complaint, filed by the Center for AI and Digital Policy (CAIDP), alleged OpenAI’s recently released GPT4 model is, “biased, deceptive, and a risk to privacy and public safety.”
Read : AI Ethics Group Says ChatGPT Violates FTC Rules, Calls for Investigation on Gizmodo.com
- Canada’s Privacy Commissioner is investigating Chat GPT for privacy violations
April 4, 2023- The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada has launched an investigation into the company behind ChatGPT.
The office says it is initiating the investigation into U.S.-based company OpenAI following a complaint alleging “the collection, use and disclosure of personal information without consent.” Read ChatGPT is facing a new Canadian privacy investigation. What we know on Global News.
- Two Complaints to France’s Privacy Watchdog CNIL
At least two complaints about the use of personal data have been filed in France against ChatGPT, Agence France-Presse (AFP) learned Wednesday, April 5, from the complainants.
The first comes from lawyer Zoé Vilain, president of the digital awareness association Janus International. “We are not anti-tech, but we want an ethical technology,” she told AFP. In her complaint, she explains that she created an account on the site of OpenAI, the Californian company behind the software, in order to use ChatGPT and found the absence of “terms and conditions” to accept and “any privacy policy.
A second complaint was filed by David Libeau, a developer and defender of online privacy. In his complaint, he explains that he found personal information about himself when he asked ChatGPT about his profile. “When I asked for more information, the algorithm started to make up stories and making me the creator of websites or organizer of online events, which were totally false,” he writes.
- Italy has Outlawed ChatGPT for 20 days pending responses to GDPR law Violations
The Italian watchdog said that not only would it block OpenAI’s chatbot but it would also investigate whether it complied with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). GDPR governs the way in which we can use, process and store personal data.
The watchdog said on March 20th that the application had experienced a data breach involving user conversations and payment information.
It said there was no legal basis to justify “the mass collection and storage of personal data for the purpose of ‘training’ the algorithms underlying the operation of the platform”.
It also said that since there was no way to verify the age of users, the app “exposes minors to absolutely unsuitable answers compared to their degree of development and awareness”.
Is Italy’s ban enforceable, given VPN systems that change one’s country of navigation? The EU is allegedly concerting on a common response.
An EU law regulating AI, in the works for three years, is to come out at the end of 2023 but won’t be enforceable immediately. Read : ChatGPT banned in Italy over privacy concerns on the BBC.com site.
JUNE 2023 ChatGPT Lawuits
- ChatGPT class action for data theft in the US in June 2023
ChatGPT creator OpenAI is stealing “vast amounts” of personal information to train its artificial intelligence models in a heedless hunt for profits, a group of anonymous individuals claimed in a lawsuit seeking class action status.
OpenAI has violated privacy laws by secretly scraping 300 billion words from the internet, tapping “books, articles, websites and posts — including personal information obtained without consent,” according to the sprawling, 157-page lawsuit.
The plaintiffs are described by their occupations or interests but identified only by initials for fear of a backlash against them, the Clarkson Law Firm said in the suit, filed Wednesday in federal court in San Francisco. They cite $3 billion in potential damages, based on a category of harmed individuals they estimate to be in the millions.
Read all the details on ChatGPT sued for stealing private date here on Fortune.
- China, Iran, North Korea and Russia have already outlawed ChatGPT outright
The Basis for Complaints against ChatGPT are Privacy Infridgement, Bias, False Information and Societal Destruction
Looking at the many examples above, several issues come up related to ChatGPT so far:
- ChatGPT Privacy violations: under the GDRP and Canadian and US laws.
- ChatGPT False information generation : The Hood case and Libeau cases above feature this issue.
- ChatGPT Danger to society: Access by minors to inappropriate information in the Italian complaint and danger to society overall in the US complaint.
- ChatGPT Bias: This issue is mentioned in the US complaint.
AI had Been Developping in a Business to Business Context so Far
Let us not confuse ChatTNT with all AI efforts. ChatGPT is in fact a unique breed of AI, one that is extremely user friendly and powerful for sure, and one that was made available to the general public without any care for potential liabilities ( read: factual mistakes and lack of protection from harmful content production). Other existing efforts to leverage AI were for business use, such as automated assessments of medical imaging, performing different types of analysis and synthesis with long text, etc…
It definitely helped place AI at the forefront of our democratic debate – at the risk of breaking apart society in the process.
As a follow up, read this post on the dangers of the ChatGPT LLM for news.
