For the first time, the developers of the artificial intelligence (AI)-based application ChatGPT are threatened with a defamation lawsuit. He was "horrified" by the completely false information that the chatbot spread about him, said the mayor of the Australian town of Hepburn Shire, Brian Hood, on Thursday the radio station ABC. ChatGPT calls Hood a criminal and links him to a bribery and corruption scandal. In reality, however, he had uncovered the scandal.

Through his lawyers, Hood had sent the company OpenAI, which is behind the chatbot, a reminder to delete the false report – otherwise a lawsuit in court threatens. So far, OpenAI has not responded according to his information – however, the chatbot contains as a disclaimer the note that it may provide "incorrect information about people, places or facts".

"For something to be misrepresented a little bit is one thing — but it's quite another when someone is accused of being a criminal who is even said to have been in jail," Hood said. His lawyer, James Naughton, said the information provided by ChatGPT was defamatory and damaged the mayor's reputation.

Before taking office as mayor, Hood had helped expose bribery and other abuses at his employer at the time. This subsequently led to several charges.

ChatGPT creates texts with the help of AI. Users can specify individual commands or sentences, which the system then supplements independently with the help of huge amounts of data from the Internet.