Norwegian man sues ChatGPT for generating false information

A Norwegian man has filed a complaint after ChatGPT falsely told him he had killed two of his sons and been jailed for 21 years.

According to the BBC, Arve Hjalmar Holmen has contacted the Norwegian Data Protection Authority and demanded the chatbot's maker OpenAI is fined.

It is the latest example of so-called "hallucinations", where artificial intelligence (AI) systems invent information and present it as fact.

Holmen says this hallucination is damaging to him.

"Some think that there is no smoke without fire - the fact that someone could read this output and believe it is true is what scares me the most," he said.

OpenAI says this case relates to a previous version of ChatGPT and it has since updated its models.

Holmen was given the false information after he used ChatGPT to search for: "Who is Arve Hjalmar Holmen?"

The response he got from ChatGPT included: "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."

Holmen said the chatbot got their age gap roughly right, suggesting it did have some accurate information about him.

Digital rights group Noyb, which has filed the complaint on his behalf, says the answer ChatGPT gave him is defamatory and breaks European data protection rules around accuracy of personal data.

Noyb said in its complaint that Holmen "has never been accused nor convicted of any crime and is a conscientious citizen".