Briefly: ChatGPT maker OpenAI is being investigated by the Federal Commerce Fee to find out if the corporate’s chatbot has damaged shopper regulation by damaging reputations and placing private information in danger. The FTC additionally desires data on two safety incidents from earlier this 12 months.
The company despatched a 20-page demand letter to OpenAI for data about the way it addresses dangers associated to its AI fashions, writes The Washington Put up. The Civil Investigative Demand additionally requests particulars concerning the firm, its AI mannequin and coaching, the way it offers with privateness and immediate injection assaults, API and plugin integrations, and information assortment.
One of many statements particularly asks what OpenAI has executed to deal with the hazard of its merchandise producing false, deceptive, or disparaging details about actual folks. Generative AIs are infamous for his or her tendency to hallucinate, in fact.
The Reg factors out that OpenAI isn’t any stranger to defamation lawsuits. A Georgia radio host sued the corporate over allegations that ChatGPT falsely related his identify with a legal situation. And in April, an Australian mayor threatened authorized motion claiming ChatGPT accused him of involvement in a international bribery scandal. The chatbot additionally falsely accused a US regulation professor of sexual assault primarily based on a fabricated Washington Put up article.
OpenAI hasn’t been very open in disclosing what information it makes use of to coach its giant language fashions powering ChatGPT. The FTC desires to know if it has been scraped from the web or if it has been purchased from third events. The company additionally asks which web sites the info has been taken from and what was executed to stop private data from getting used as coaching information.
The information-scraping practices of generative AI corporations has been a controversial situation just lately. Elon Musk threatened to sue Microsoft, which has invested billions into OpenAI, for illegally utilizing Twitter information – it was additionally the claimed cause behind limiting customers’ tweet views. Reddit, in the meantime, noticed a mass consumer revolt after it began charging for entry to its API in response to information scraping by AI corporations.
The FTC additionally desires data and data associated to safety incidents earlier this 12 months. One was a bug that allowed some customers to see payment-related data, the opposite uncovered the titles of customers’ chat histories.
we constructed GPT-4 on high of years of security analysis and spent 6+ months after we completed preliminary coaching making it safer and extra aligned earlier than releasing it. we shield consumer privateness and design our techniques to be taught concerning the world, not non-public people.
– Sam Altman (@sama) July 13, 2023
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman mentioned the corporate will work with FTC. He added that it protects consumer privateness and designs its techniques to be taught concerning the world, not non-public people.
The FTC has already handed giant fines to Meta, Amazon, and Twitter over allegations they violated shopper safety legal guidelines. OpenAI might face an identical punishment whether it is discovered to have executed the identical, a transfer that would go away different generative AI corporations sweating.
Earlier his month, Google up to date its privateness coverage to explicitly state that the corporate reserves the suitable to gather and analyze just about something folks share on the internet to coach its AI techniques.