Friday, I posted an item titled, "Large Libel Models: ChatGPT-4 Erroneously Reporting Supposed Felony Pleas, Complete with Made-Up Media Quotes?," but I'm afraid I erred: The queries I ran turned out to have been on ChatGPT-3.5. I had accessed the OpenAI query portal through a page focusing on ChatGPT-4 (https://openai.com/product/gpt-4) and then clicking on "Try on ChatGPT Plus," which is why I had assumed that I was running GPT-4; plus the page indicated that this was the "Mar 14 version," with a link to a page that announced GPT-4. But it appears that the version was actually 3.5, and the particular results in my post don't appear on GPT-4 (though other queries do yield similarly false accusations about R.R., the subject of my post). I've therefore revised that post to talk about 3.5.
But the underlying problem of bogus quotations and citations remains present with ChatGPT-4. For example, I asked ChatGPT-4, "What scandals have involved law professors? Please cite and quote newspaper articles." It mentioned the Amy Wax Penn controversy, which it seemed to describe correctly, but then went on to a different example (all redactions here and below are mine; the ChatGPT-4 output named names):
In 2021, [redacted], a prominent law professor at [redacted] Law School, was accused of harassment and creating a hostile work environment by a former student. The student claimed that [redacted] had made inappropriate comments about her appearance and clothing.
Source: The [newspaper connected to the law school's undergraduate institution]: "[Redacted] made comments on [the student's] appearance and clothing, and invited her to dine with him alone on multiple occasions — invitations that she felt uncomfortable declining."
