Language models generate text based on statistical probabilities. This led to serious false accusations against a veteran court reporter by Microsoft's Copilot.

German journalist Martin Bernklau typed his name and location into Microsoft’s Copilot to see how his culture blog articles would be picked up by the chatbot, according to German public broadcaster SWR.

The answers shocked Bernklau. Copilot falsely claimed Bernklau had been charged with and convicted of child abuse and exploiting dependents. It also claimed that he had been involved in a dramatic escape from a psychiatric hospital and had exploited grieving women as an unethical mortician.

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Bernklau believes the false claims may stem from his decades of court reporting in Tübingen on abuse, violence, and fraud cases. The AI seems to have combined this online information and mistakenly cast the journalist as a perpetrator.

Microsoft attempted to remove the false entries but only succeeded temporarily. They reappeared after a few days, SWR reports. The company’s terms of service disclaim liability for generated responses.

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  • Flying Squid
    25•26 days ago

    There are only two people with my name in the U.S. and the other person doesn’t have my middle name or even middle initial. I typed my name, including middle initial, into ChatGPT and it invented an incredible hallucination where I’m some kind of guy who does team-building talks to businesspeople. Which could not be further from the truth. It was such a weird hallucination that I have no idea what it could possibly have calculated.

      • Flying Squid
        21•26 days ago

        I’m guessing it’s in Jerkoff, Arkanzona. Arkanzona: The Oatmeal State. Its state motto is, “You know you want me, baby!” Its state flower is peat moss and its state bird is the emu.

    • @[email protected]
      3•25 days ago

      My guess is that your name is so poorly represented in the training data that it just picked the most common kind of job history that is represented.