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Reason
Reason
Politics
Eugene Volokh

Large Libel Models: ChatGPT-3.5 Erroneously Reporting Supposed Felony Pleas, Complete with Made-Up Media Quotes?

[UPDATE: My apologies for misattributing this at first to ChatGPT-4. 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 below don't appear on GPT-4. I've therefore revised the 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):

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."

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