The lawyer of the Hepburn Shire mayor threatening to take the creators of artificial intelligence program ChatGPT to court says new legal issues could potentially arise out of any possible lawsuit.
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Gordon Legal partner of commercial law James Naughton is representing Hepburn Shire mayor Brian Hood as he seeks correction and compensation from the AI chatbot's creators, OpenAI, after it published false information about Cr Hood's involvement in a Reserve Bank bribery scandal.
Prior to becoming the mayor of Hepburn Shire, Cr Hood was the whistleblower in an international bribery case, called the Securency scandal, which saw amounts paid to public officials in Indonesia, Malaysia and Nepal.
However, when the chatbot is asked about Cr Hood's involvement in the scandal, it incorrectly states Cr Hood was one of the figures behind the bribery, and jailed as a result.
Mr Naughton said the comments damaged Cr Hood's reputation both in his own community and overseas.
"He was deeply concerned about that due to his position as an elected official, he is the mayor of Hepburn Shire, he is also a director of the Trentham Community Bank," he said.
"His reputation and his standing in the community is of direct importance to his role and the service he gives to the community."
In the weeks that followed Cr Hood coming to Gordon Legal, the law firm issued a Concerns Notice to OpenAI, outlining Cr Hood's grievances and asking for the information to be taken down.
Three weeks on from the letter, and Mr Naughton said the law firm had heard nothing from the American tech company.
"That is quite disappointing, because even checking yesterday, one version of OpenAI that is still available for download and use in Australia still has the defamatory content about Brian."
Any potential lawsuit involving ChatGPT looks to break new ground in the online speech space.
In Australia, Google had won a victory in Victoria's Court of Appeals after successfuly appealing a 2021 decision which found it was responsible for distributing a defamatory article from The Age about an underworld figure.
Another tech defamation case, involving social media giant Facebook, saw the Australian High Court rule that publishers were responsible for defamatory comments posted to their social media pages.
Mr Naughton said the radio silence from OpenAI was disappointing considering the movement happening in the tech giants' understanding of Australian defamation law.
"It again is disappointing because there has been some progress made by other large IT organisations to have a pathway when these really egregious, misleading and false statements come out," he said.
"Entities like Facebook and Google have gotten better at responding and taking things down quickly.
"That is probably a result of legal pressure and them understanding their obligations in Australia perhaps a bit better."
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