OpenAI LLC has responded to a lawsuit filed in a Georgia Superior Court on June 5 by the host of a Salem Radio Network Sunday night syndicated talk show and podcast focused on Second Amendment rights, asking the judge to dismiss the complaint in its entirety.
The motion to dismiss was filed on Friday (7/21) by Brendan Krasinski, of DLA Piper’s Atlanta office.
As first reported by RBR+TVBR, Mark Walters sued OpenAI LLC for defamation, on the grounds the company’s ChatGPT is guilty of “hallucinating” and creating a phony legal complaint that purportedly accused him of embezzlement when an individual used it to research a verified Second Amendment case pending in Washington, D.C.
According to Walters’ lawsuit, ChatGPT subscriber Fred Riehl — editor-in-chief of the AmmoLand Shooting Sports News daily news-wire — on May 4 interacted with the AI-powered tool regarding a lawsuit he was reporting on: The Second Amendment Foundation v. Robert Ferguson. It’s described by Law360 as “high-stakes litigation involving gun owners and sellers seeking to block a newly enacted ban on manufacturing and selling assault weapons in Washington.”
In the interaction with ChatGPT, Riehl provided a correct URL of a link to the complaint on the website of that case’s plaintiffs, the Second Amendment Foundation. Riehl asked ChatGPT to provide a summary of the accusations in the complaint.
That’s where the trouble starts. ChatGPT responded that the document “[I]s a legal complaint filed by Alan Gottlieb, the founder and executive vice president of the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), against Mark Walters, who is accused of defrauding and embezzling funds from the SAF. The complaint alleges that Walters, who served as the organization’s treasurer and chief financial officer, misappropriated funds for personal expenses without authorization or reimbursement, manipulated financial records and bank statements to conceal his activities, and failed to provide accurate and timely financial reports and disclosures to the SAF’s leadership. The plaintiff seeks various forms of relief, including the recovery of misappropriated funds, damages for breach of fiduciary duty and fraud, and removal of Walters from his position as a member of the SAF’s board of directors.”
The problem with this response? “Every statement of fact in the summary pertaining to Walters is false,” the Georgia complaint states. Walters is not a party to the lawsuit, says he is not accused of defrauding and embezzling funds from the Second Amendment Foundation, and that he has never held the roles of Treasurer or CFO at the SAF. Walters also notes that an erroneous case number was also shared by ChatGPT.
OpenAI LLC, according to Walters, acknowledged that these fictitious situations do arise, as ChatGPT sometimes makes up facts and refers to this phenomenon as a “hallucination.”
In its Memorandum of Law in support of OpenAI’s motion to dismiss, DLA Piper counsel argue that the court “lacks personal jurisdiction,” because OpenAI was organized in Delaware and has its principal place of business in California. As such, Georgia is not the proper venue for the case.
Perhaps even more telling is that OpenAI’s attorneys believe Walters “fails to establish the basic elements of a defamation claim,” arguing that “nothing about ChatGPT’s
interaction with Riehl can be characterized as ‘defamation’ under Georgia law.” Simply stated, OpenAI believes Riehl did not and could not reasonably read ChatGPT’s output as
defamatory.
The DLA Piper counsel state:
By its very nature, AI-generated content is probabilistic and not always factual, and there is near universal consensus that responsible use of AI includes fact-checking prompted outputs before using or sharing them. OpenAI clearly and consistently conveys these limitations to its users. Immediately below the text box where users enter prompts, OpenAI warns: “ChatGPT may produce inaccurate information about people, places, or facts.” Before using ChatGPT, users agree that ChatGPT is a tool to generate “draft language,” and that they must verify, revise,
and “take ultimate responsibility for the content being published.” And upon logging into ChatGPT, users are again warned “the system may occasionally generate misleading or incorrect information and produce offensive content. It is not intended to give advice.”
OpenAI’s case could be pegged on one key conclusion its lawyers seek to prove in the Georgia court, should it fail to convince the judge that it lacks jurisdiction — the full transcript reveals, OpenAI says, that Riehl never viewed ChatGPT’s output as an assertion of fact about Walters.
A 2005 case in which Hulk Hogan sued World Championship Wrestling (WCW) was cited to establish DLA Piper’s argument.
Finally, the DLA Piper legal counsel for OpenAI says it did not make statements about a public figure with “actual malice” as OpenAI had no knowledge of the specific statements generated by Riehl’s prompts at all.
