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.

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.

  • robsuto@lemmy.ml
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    8 months ago

    What do you mean by ‘there’s no open source scene’?

    I don’t understand what open source has to do with this.

    • Vaquedoso@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      He’s saying that the only corporations with the fighting power to take on legal battles will end up being the big ones. So we may end up in a situation where AI will only be in the hands of the mega wealthy, instead of in the hands of regular people.