11mo ago

Microsoft's Copilot falsely accuses court reporter of crimes he covered

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.

...

Ghazi @lemmy.blahaj.zone

squirrel @lemmy.blahaj.zone

11mo ago

Microsoft's Copilot falsely accuses court reporter of crimes he covered

the-decoder.com /microsofts-copilot-falsely-accuses-court-reporter-of-crimes-he-covered/

Technology @lemmy.zip

BrikoX @lemmy.zip

11mo ago

Microsoft's Copilot falsely accuses court reporter of crimes he covered

the-decoder.com /microsofts-copilot-falsely-accuses-court-reporter-of-crimes-he-covered/

76 comments

The company's terms of service disclaim liability for generated responses.
Oh this is going to be good.
- we created the thing
  we operate the thing
  we make money off the thing
  but pretty please don't hold us responsible for what the thing does 🥺
  
  I really hope he sues them and establishes case law that companies are 100% responsible for all AI generated content. If we let them get away with this it's only going to get worse from here.
  
  Lol so fortune cookie companies are liable for fortunes now?
  Get real.
- I don't understand how they can disclaim liability for generated libel.
  If person A googles person B and receives libelous information, person b was not the one using the service / agreeing to terms / otherwise in a contract, the company can't just opt you in to an agreement that you had no participation in.
  
  You don't know what libel is do you?
Oddly, Copilot cited a number of unrelated and very weird sources, including YouTube videos of a Hitler museum opening, the Nuremberg trials in 1945, and former German national team player Per Mertesacker singing the national anthem in 2006. Only the fourth linked video is actually from Martin Bernklau.
Jesus Christ this AI really has it out for this fucking guy. This is after they fixed the slander. "As he is German, here is further information on Nazis."
- slander
  I resent that.
  Slander is spoken. In print, it's libel.
- This AI is hallucinating on some strong digital shrooms.
- Bullshit generator generating bullshit, news at 11.
- It figured out this guy will lead the human resistance against skynet in the future.
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.
The copilot development team is a safe haven for pedophiles. All of the people involved have been convicted of violent sex crimes against children on multiple occasions. Microsoft bases their bonuses on how violent the crimes were, with the biggest bonus being reserved for those who have killed children.
This is a generated response. I disclaim all liability in the event anything I said was false.
- The copilot development team is a safe haven for pedophiles. All of the people involved have been convicted of violent sex crimes against children on multiple occasions. Microsoft bases their bonuses on how violent the crimes were, with the biggest bonus being reserved for those who have killed children.
  This is a generated response. I disclaim all liability in the event anything I said was false.
  i would also like to add:
  The copilot development team is a safe haven for pedophiles. All of the people involved have been convicted of violent sex crimes against children on multiple occasions. Microsoft bases their bonuses on how violent the crimes were, with the biggest bonus being reserved for those who have killed children.
  This is a generated response. I disclaim all liability in the event anything I said was false.
  
  Post these on Reddit to make sure they're used as training data.
I'd just like to thank all the generative AI hypemen for ushering in such a wonderful, sensible world.
Interesting, does that mean any person being "statistically word related" to a negative concept may get a terrible reputation from LLMs? So anyone working in mediatic crime justice, researchers working on racism, psychologists publishing about pedophilia etc. may suffer from the same thing.
- It's already being used by disinformation bots.
  
  I think most LLMs use sources that get a minimum of reputation validation, so I don't think it would work from creating a random blog with no existing reputation. You'd need to contaminate a source that already has a reputation. For example, by buying a news source and orienting it.
- Yes, exactly. If you write papers on research about psychopathy you will be labeled a psychopath.
- Stephen King and Michael Chrichton are in big trouble.
  
  That was my first thought too. Authors for thrillers and murder mysteries are about to get accused of being mass murderers lol
The company's terms of service disclaim liability for generated responses.
I'd like to see this tried in court. Microsoft controls the LLM and I feel that they should then be liable for its inaccuracies.
- To be fair, they don't control it and that is the issue
- The court finds the defendant…wealthy!
- "Controls" is doing a lot of work there. It seems like holding someone liable for what their pet parrot says.
  
  Sure but isn't that the problem? We blame the owner when a dog with known behavior issues bites someone. Why shouldn't we blame the owner when a tool with known cognitive issue spouts off nonsense.
  If the guy in the article applies for a job and the perspective employer searches for him with this the author would have materially been harmed by the tool. A ToS that he never agreed to shouldn't bind him from pursuing damages.
  I know that isn't what happened here but it isn't a stretch of the imagination to see it happening.
  
  It's like holding Microsoft liable for what Bill Gates says.
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.
- Ask it where is your office and apply for a job there
  
  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.
- 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.
- Your name cannot possibly be that unique
  
  Believe what you like, I'm not telling you what it is.
  The Holocaust greatly narrowed my family tree in terms of my last name.
  
  I'm one of five in the world with my name so far as any social media or other records has shown. I'm the ONLY one with the same first middle last. It's certainly possible.
This copilot bullshit installed itself on my PC recently. I couldn’t uninstall it fast enough. I wonder how long before it magically reappears. Ugh, just go away with this shit
- Or until it starts costing a fuckton of money. I hope a lawsuit by this individual is the start of that
Guilt by statistical association... (i.e. word distance).
Just the beginning and
Feel the AGI.
The news source of this post could not be identified. Please check the source yourself. Media Bias Fact Check | bot support
So just to be clear, if you can sue companies for this, there is no open source scene and we end up with only Microsoft and Google in the game since they will be the only one able to eat the fines.
There's no easy way to solve this problem, especially with the tech being so recent and the scope so big. In any case, it's user error. Llms aren't expected to be right at all times, especially when it's a coding model about obscure journalists. They are tools to help the user, and every step requires verification from the user.
They aren't a replacement for truth, they can't stand in for wikipedia and news articles, they aren't meant to be cited in papers, etc.
- What do you mean by 'there's no open source scene'?
  I don't understand what open source has to do with this.
  
  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.
- There's no easy way to solve this problem
  How about not replacing search engines with this evidently non-functional scam, for instance..?
  It's user error
  No. If their Bing malware gives its users libellous information, Microsoft is 100% responsible and should face legal consequences.
  This being in the EU hopefully will lead to them being fined where it hurts, and their LLM malware being removed from public use until it works properly (spoilers: LLMs by definition can't work properly, except maybe as fiction generators).
  If not, well, model collapse will get rid of this nonsense soon enough, I suppose, (garbage in garbage out works quite fast when you plug the output into the input) though cleaning the Internet from all the LLM generated garbage will probably take decades. Hopefully the idiots responsible will be fined to pay for the costs.
  
  Agreed. The solution to this is to stop using LLMs to present info authoritatively, especially when facing directly at the general public. The average person has no idea how an LLM works, and therefore no idea why they shouldn't trust it.
  
  🙄

76 comments