this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2025
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A Norwegian man said he was horrified to discover that ChatGPT outputs had falsely accused him of murdering his own children.

According to a complaint filed Thursday by European Union digital rights advocates Noyb, Arve Hjalmar Holmen decided to see what information ChatGPT might provide if a user searched his name. He was shocked when ChatGPT responded with outputs falsely claiming that he was sentenced to 21 years in prison as "a convicted criminal who murdered two of his children and attempted to murder his third son," a Noyb press release said.

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[–] SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 12 points 6 days ago

Sorry, I've spent months telling chatgpt that Arve Hjalmar Holmen killed his kids for a school project.

[–] MagicShel@lemmy.zip 187 points 1 week ago (29 children)

It's AI. There's nothing to delete but the erroneous response. There is no database of facts to edit. It doesn't know fact from fiction, and the response is also very much skewed by the context of the query. I could easily get it to say the same about nearly any random name just by asking it about a bunch of family murders and then asking about a name it doesn't recognize. It is more likely to assume that person is in the same category as the others and if the one or more of the names have any association (real or fictional) with murder.

[–] bluGill@fedia.io 104 points 1 week ago (6 children)

I don't care why. That is still libel and it is illegal for good reason. if you can't stop this for all cases then you ai is and should be illegal.

[–] tfm@europe.pub 48 points 1 week ago (1 children)

None of the moneybags will listen, unfortunately. But I'm with you. The rollout of AI was extremely irresponsible. Just to make it profitable as quickly as possible.

[–] Flagstaff@programming.dev 10 points 1 week ago

To be fair, based on observations after these years, it doesn't appear that waiting longer before release would have significantly improved Autocomplete Idiocy in any way.

[–] MagicShel@lemmy.zip 20 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Seems to me libel would require AI to have credibility, which it does not.

It's a tool. Like most useful tools it can do harmful things. We know almost nothing about the provenance of this output. It could have been poisoned either accidentally or deliberately.

But above all, the problem is ignorant people believing the output of AI is truth. It's pretty good at some things, but the more esoteric the knowledge, the less reliable it is. It's best to treat AI as a storyteller. Yeah there are a lot of facts in there but when they don't serve the story they can be embellished. I don't see the harm in just acknowledging that and moving on.

[–] deur@feddit.nl 22 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Im not a lawyer but the most conclusive missing piece of what we commonly understand to be libel is the information has to be published.

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[–] kibiz0r@midwest.social 20 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Meanwhile, AI vendors:

“AI will soon be the only way we access information and make decisions!”

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[–] ech@lemm.ee 16 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Except it's not libel. It's a one time string of text generated exclusively for him. Literally no one would have known what it said if the guy didn't get the exact thing he wants "deleted" published online for everyone to see. Now it'll be linked to his name forever, but the llm didn't do that.

It's been shown repeatedly that putting the same input into a gen AI will often get the same output, or extremely similar. So he has grounds to be concerned that anybody else asking the LLM about him would be getting the same libelous result.

[–] JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz 12 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Libel requires the claims to be published or broadcasted, so it isn't. A predictive text algorithm strung some random words together, and the guy got offended.
It's like suing because your phone keyboard autosuggested "is a murderer" as the next words after you wrote your name. Btw, I tried it a few times for lulz and managed to get it to write out "bluGill and the kids are going to get it on", so I guess you can sue Google now?

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[–] surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 45 points 1 week ago (22 children)

I have this gun machine that shoots in all directions randomly. I can't predict it, so I can't stop it from shooting you. So sorry. It's uncontrollable.

[–] MagicShel@lemmy.zip 11 points 1 week ago (10 children)

Yeah but I can just ignore the bullets because they are nerf. And I have my own nerf guns as well.

I mean at some point any analogy fails, but AI is nothing like a gun.

[–] cecilkorik@lemmy.ca 12 points 1 week ago (3 children)

They may seem like nerf when they first come out of the AI, but they turn into real bullets once they start filling people's heads with convincing enough lies and falsehoods, and those people start wielding their own weapons against minorities, democracy, and the government. If the election of Trump 2.0 has not convinced you of the immense danger of disinformation and misinformation, I have literally no idea how anything could ever possibly get through to you.

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[–] General_Effort@lemmy.world 10 points 1 week ago (4 children)

If creating text is like shooting bullets, we should require a license for text editors.

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[–] ElPussyKangaroo@lemmy.world 90 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Well, here we are. We skipped using this tech for only search Automation and leapfrogged to directly making shit up (once again).

[–] OpenPassageways@lemmy.zip 58 points 1 week ago (3 children)

To me it's clear that these tools are primarily useful as bullshit generators, and I expect them to hallucinate and be inaccurate. But the companies trying to capitalize on the "AI" bubble are saying that these tools can be useful and accurate. I imagine OpenAI is going to have to invoke the Fox News defense in this case, and claim that "no reasonable person would take this seriously".

[–] ElPussyKangaroo@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago

I feel like the primary use of these tools is only grammar and writing assistance. Everything else is just plugging in extra tools to make it more useful... although the way Perplexity does it is considerably more useful than the rest.

[–] oxysis@lemm.ee 33 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Don’t use hallucinate to describe what it is doing, that is humanizing it and making the tech seem more advanced than it is. It is randomly mashing words together without understanding the meaning of any of them

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[–] ech@lemm.ee 20 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Leapfrogged? It never left. LLMs were made to make shit up.

[–] ElPussyKangaroo@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago

Not necessarily, but I get what you mean...

[–] thatsnothowyoudoit@lemmy.ca 74 points 1 week ago (18 children)

It’s all hallucinations.

Some (many) just happen to be very close to factual.

It’s sad to see that the marketing of these tools has been so effective that few realize how they work and what they do.

[–] Vegeta@lemmy.ca 27 points 1 week ago (2 children)

It really is sad. I often hear, "I even asked ChatGPT and it said..." as if that means their response is valid. I've heard people say it who I thought would know better, too.

[–] pogmommy@lemmy.ml 19 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The number of times I've heard that by people expecting it to win them arguments is incredibly discouraging.

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[–] ameancow@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

few realize how they work and what they do.

Seriously, you have no idea. I have spent some time delving into the current models, human psychology, neurology and evolution and how people engage with each other or other entities, and the problem is already worse than we realize, and it's going to get so, so much worse, because our species has major vulnerabilities in our entire conscious experience, these things are going to reshape the way people engage with reality itself at some point and we should all be a lot more concerned and I'm an old man yelling on the street corner with a cardboard sign huh.

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[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 50 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Is it really him that it's saying did this? I mean, I could look up my dad's name and all I get are articles about a serial killer who just happened to have the same name; and that's not generated by AI. Names aren't usually unique identifiers.

[–] theparadox@lemmy.world 24 points 1 week ago (5 children)

ChatGPT's "made-up horror story" not only hallucinated events that never happened, but it also mixed "clearly identifiable personal data"—such as the actual number and gender of Holmen's children and the name of his hometown—with the "fake information," Noyb's press release said.

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[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 23 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Plot twist: "Dad" isn't even his real name.

[–] Tja@programming.dev 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

What?? That changes everything! Does that mean my name could be false too?

Best regards,
- Hungry

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[–] seeigel@feddit.org 23 points 1 week ago

Or ChatGPT has become a precog and is reporting a precrime. Lock him up!

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 20 points 1 week ago (2 children)

When do we start suing makers of fortune cookies for lucky coincidences?

"Claim".

I mean, the guy is right, because it's advertised as "artificial intelligence".

Were it advertised as word salad generator, a Markovian chain grown big and scary, something in principle similar to programs for generation of fantasy language texts and spells and names (if someone remembers 00s good old web) for roleplaying, - then there would be no problem.

But if to sell something better you lie what it is, and that lie has social consequences, you should get sued to freezing hot inferno with mustard-greased giant-cockroach-dildo-covered walls. You should also probably face criminal charges.

[–] OpenPassageways@lemmy.zip 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yeah, similar to Tesla "full self driving".

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[–] Dragonstaff@leminal.space 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

People thinking a glorified autocorrect is a source of factual information is horrifying.

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[–] echodot@feddit.uk 16 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Are we sure that someone else with that name hasn't committed those crimes? After all if I search my name it says I'm an astronaut, because there is an actual NASA astronaut with my name. It's not saying I'm that person, it's just saying that that name is the same as that person's.

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[–] DarkCloud@lemmy.world 16 points 1 week ago (1 children)

There's a list of names of people who have sued OpenAI, they often cause ChatGPT to shut down.

We should keep those names handy just incase cyber dogs are ever chasing us.

[–] CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 1 week ago

Certain names, including "David Mayer," "Brian Hood," "Jonathan Turley," "Jonathan Zittrain," "David Faber," and "Guido Scorza," cause ChatGPT to produce an error message and terminate the chat session, likely due to a hard-coded filter or privacy concerns.

Context: @OpenPassageways@lemmy.zip is an international fugitive wanted for many warcrimes including the mass murder against various AIs

-Sincerely ChatGPT

[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

when I've searched my name with Google over the years, it has said I'm a high school football star, corporate lawyer, Ironman competitor, hotel chef, tech support specialist, janitorial manager, and horse trainer. LIES! ALL LIES!!!

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[–] msage@programming.dev 8 points 1 week ago
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