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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  • @[email protected]
    3•3 months ago

    quite frankly because I have hardly ever seen governments regulating technology having good results; we should mostly be allowed to experiment with technology without governments telling us how to do it, this is how we make human progress

    The guy who wrote https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence didn’t know about large language models yet but his thoughts apply to them too tbh.

    • ✺roguetrick✺
      9•3 months ago

      In the common law system (which Germany is not) this is already actionable by defamation torts. It’s no different from you installing faulty wiring and burning your neighbor’s house down. If you cause damages, you pay for them. Something being digital isn’t a magic externality that makes you not responsible.