An Australian mayor is threatening to sue OpenAI for defamation over false claims made by its artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT saying he was jailed for his criminal participation in a foreign bribery scandal he blew the whistle on.
Gordon Legal, acting on behalf of regional Victorian council Hepburn Shire Mayor Brian Hood, sent a concerns notice to OpenAI on March 21, claiming that he had been defamed by the company’s chatbot.
Hood’s lawyers allege that ChatGPT told users that Hood was found guilty of charges relating to bribes paid by Note Printing Australia and Securency Australia to officials in Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam and Nepal between 1999 and 2004.
His actual role was as a whistleblower in the scandal that plagued the two subsidiaries of the Reserve Bank of Australia. Multiple executives — not including Hood — were charged with their roles in the scandal and the companies were fined $21 million.
Hood said he only looked at what ChatGPT said about him after he was alerted to it by others. He’s worried about the answers hurting his reputation as a local councillor and businessman.
“It’s remarkable. It’s devastating. It’s incredibly inaccurate. The media gave me the tag of whistleblower, I was the prosecution’s witness, I did reveal a number of things. There was never a suggestion that I did anything wrong,” he told Crikey.
The notice, first reported by Forbes Australia, claims that OpenAI has caused damage to Hood’s reputation by giving “inaccurate and unreliable answers disguised as fact”.
“As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly integrated into our society, the accuracy of the information provided by these services will come under close legal scrutiny. The claim brought will aim to remedy the harm caused to Mr Hood and ensure the accuracy of this software in his case,” Gordon Legal partner James Naughton said.
Victoria’s defamation laws require prospective claimants to serve a concerns notice that outlines the defamation claims and gives publishers an opportunity to respond. Hood said he hasn’t heard anything back from OpenAI since his lawyers sent the notice last month but he is considering filing proceedings at the conclusion of the mandatory 28-day waiting period from when the notice was sent.
“We haven’t heard anything. We’ll see what happens,” he said.
Crikey was unable to replicate the claims when interacting with ChatGPT. When asked of Hood’s involvement with the Note Printing Australia scandal, the bot said “To the best of my knowledge, there is no information to suggest that Brian Hood, the former mayor of Hepburn Shire Council, was involved in any way with Note Printing Australia or the scandal that surrounded the company in 2012”.
Whether ChatGPT can be sued for defamation has not been tested in Australian law. Online platforms have been deemed publishers and therefore liable for hosting defamatory material, like in the case of Google being repeatedly successfully sued over comments in search results listed by the company.
OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
