OpenAI has touted ChatGPT as a reliable source of assertions of fact, not just as a source of entertaining nonsense. . . .\u00a0 The AI companies’ current and future business models rests entirely on their programs’ credibility for producing reasonable accurate summaries of the facts. When OpenAI helps promote ChatGPT’s ability to get high scores on bar exams or the SAT, it’s similarly trying to get the public to view ChatGPT’s output as reliable. Likewise when its software is incorporated into search engines, or into other applications, presumably precisely because it’s seen as pretty reliable. It can’t then turn around and, in a libel lawsuit, raise a defense that it’s all just Jabberwocky.<\/p>\n

Naturally, everyone understands that AI programs aren’t perfect. But everyone understands that newspapers aren’t perfect, either\u2014yet that can’t be enough to give newspapers immunity from defamation liability; likewise for AI programs. And that’s especially so when the output is framed in quite definite language, complete with purported quotes from respected publications.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Here’s my question: Is the reasonable observer test about business models, or is it about what people familiar with the service would think?\u00a0 Because if the test is about what normal observers would think, it seems to me that no one who tries ChatGPT could think its output is factually accurate.<\/p>\n

That’s what makes ChatGPT distinctive and interesting, I think. It combines good writing and ease of language that sounds real, on one hand, with obvious factual inaccuracies, on the other.\u00a0 It’s all style, no substance. The false claims of fact are an essential characteristic of the ChatGPT user experience, it seems to me.\u00a0 If you spend five minutes querying it, there’s no way you can miss this.<\/p>\n

For example, back in January, I asked ChatGPT to write a bio for me.\u00a0 This should be easy to do accurately, as there are lots of online bios of me if you just google my name.\u00a0 \u00a0ChatGPT’s version was well written, but it had lots and lots of details wrong.<\/p>\n