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Microsoft's Copilot falsely accuses court reporter of crimes he covered (the-decoder.com)

submitted 1 month ago by fpslem@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

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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.

...

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[-] ngwoo@lemmy.world 69 points 1 month ago

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.

[-] dubious@lemmy.world 30 points 1 month ago

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:

This is a generated response. I disclaim all liability in the event anything I said was false.

[-] leadore@lemmy.world 19 points 1 month ago

Post these on Reddit to make sure they're used as training data.

[-] roguetrick@lemmy.world 69 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

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."

[-] Blackmist@feddit.uk 16 points 1 month ago

slander

I resent that.

Slander is spoken. In print, it's libel.

[-] Eranziel@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago

Bullshit generator generating bullshit, news at 11.

[-] Eezyville@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 month ago

This AI is hallucinating on some strong digital shrooms.

[-] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 62 points 1 month ago

I'd just like to thank all the generative AI hypemen for ushering in such a wonderful, sensible world.

[-] TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world 20 points 1 month ago

[-] oce@jlai.lu 49 points 1 month ago

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.

[-] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 12 points 1 month ago

Yes, exactly. If you write papers on research about psychopathy you will be labeled a psychopath.

[-] kent_eh@lemmy.ca 10 points 1 month ago

Stephen King and Michael Chrichton are in big trouble.

[-] PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago

That was my first thought too. Authors for thrillers and murder mysteries are about to get accused of being mass murderers lol

[-] Burninator05@lemmy.world 33 points 1 month ago

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.

[-] TechieDamien@lemmy.ml 13 points 1 month ago

To be fair, they don't control it and that is the issue

[-] ayyy@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 month ago

The court finds the defendant…wealthy!

[-] lolcatnip@reddthat.com 1 points 1 month ago

"Controls" is doing a lot of work there. It seems like holding someone liable for what their pet parrot says.

[-] Burninator05@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago

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.

[-] lolcatnip@reddthat.com 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

People need to quit acting like shit a computer spits out it's true. Unlike a dog bite, false information can't hurt anytime if nobody takes it seriously.

What's the alternative? Shut down all uses of generative AI because of liability issues? "Just make it tell the truth" is not a viable solution.

[-] tastysnacks@programming.dev 1 points 1 month ago

It's like holding Microsoft liable for what Bill Gates says.

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 24 points 1 month ago

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.

[-] sun_is_ra@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 month ago

Ask it where is your office and apply for a job there

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 20 points 1 month ago

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.

[-] Archer@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

Why does this sound so suspiciously plausible

[-] WanderingVentra@lemm.ee 2 points 1 month ago

Lol It's got the exact mix of ridiculous terms and unearned self-assuredness of AI.

[-] Eranziel@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

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.

[-] ravhall@discuss.online 2 points 1 month ago

Your name cannot possibly be that unique

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 15 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

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.

[-] ravhall@discuss.online 4 points 1 month ago

Ahhh. Gotcha.

[-] ayyy@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 month ago

[-] tiredofsametab@fedia.io 2 points 1 month ago

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.

[-] Broken_Monitor@lemmy.world 20 points 1 month ago

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

[-] CeeBee_Eh@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

[-] Grimy@lemmy.world 8 points 1 month ago

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.

[-] robsuto@lemmy.ml 24 points 1 month 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 8 points 1 month 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.

[-] 2xsaiko@discuss.tchncs.de 12 points 1 month ago

"Open source" models usually run on your local hardware instead of accessing it through some corporation's website. Who are you gonna sue when your own computer spits out garbage about you, yourself?

[-] ravhall@discuss.online 8 points 1 month ago

People don’t understand AI.

[-] Grimy@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

I imagine the ones creating and distributing the model. Even if you only got sued when you hosted a model and not when you shared it, it still doesn't make for a good ecosystem. Regular people should have the choice to use models even if it spits out garbage for certain tasks, it might suit their needs for their own task perfectly.

There's no reason to gatekeep llms and lock them behind hardware requirements, it's up to people to understand their limitations and what they are for.

[-] 2xsaiko@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 1 month ago

I mean I'm not a lawyer but this is what I think is relevant here:

This is a public service provided by Microsoft (or whoever really)
It prints libel
They're responsible for the libel it prints as it's not user generated content (I think there's a law about that that excludes specifically this so running social media sites is viable)

I really don't think it matters whether what's behind it is an LLM or an underpaid Indian writing the text in real time or if it's just static pages the site owner wrote. They're still responsible for it.

If you run it locally, none of it is public (until you publish what it generated, in which case you're responsible for the content).

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[-] xia@lemmy.sdf.org 7 points 1 month ago

Guilt by statistical association... (i.e. word distance).

[-] TheFin@leminal.space 7 points 1 month ago

Just the beginning and

[-] MediaBiasFactChecker@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

The news source of this post could not be identified. Please check the source yourself. Media Bias Fact Check | bot support

[-] paraphrand@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

Feel the AGI.

this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2024

513 points (100.0% liked)

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