If ChatGPT is suspected of defamation, can OpenAI be exempted from liability?

Section 230 of the U.S. Communications Decency Act of 1996 stipulates that companies are not legally liable for content posted by third parties or users on their platforms (Section 230). However, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide in the coming months whether to weaken this protection, which may also have an impact on artificial intelligence chatbots such as ChatGPT.

It is reported that the judges will make a ruling before the end of June to determine whether Alphabet’s YouTube can be sued for recommending videos to users. Although the platform is exempt from liability for videos uploaded by users, does the protection of “Section 230” still apply when it uses algorithms to recommend content to users?

Technology and legal experts say the case has implications beyond social media platforms, and the verdict could spark new debates over whether companies such as OpenAI and Google that develop AI chatbots can sue for legal claims such as defamation or invasion of privacy. Disclaimer. Experts point out that this is because the algorithms used by ChatGPT and others are similar to the way videos are recommended to YouTube users.

Cameron Carey, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington and an expert on artificial intelligence, said: "At the heart of this debate is the importance of recommendation engines in organizing information and shaping content online. So big that they need to be held accountable." "I share the same concerns about chatbots."

Representatives for OpenAI and Google did not respond to requests for comment.

AI chatbots are trained to produce massive amounts of original content, and “Section 230” often applies to third-party content. The court has not yet considered whether AI chatbot responses would be protected. A Democratic senator said the immunity rights cannot apply to generative AI tools because these tools "create content." He said: "Section 230 is about protecting users and websites hosting and organizing user speech. It should not exempt companies from the consequences of their own actions and products."

The technology industry has been pushing to retain Section 230 Clause 230. Some think of tools like ChatGPT as being like search engines, serving existing content to users based on queries. "AI doesn't really create anything. It just renders existing content in a different way or in a different format," said Carl Szabo, vice president and general counsel of NetChoice, a tech industry trade group.

If Section 230 is weakened, it would create an impossible task for AI developers and expose them to a torrent of lawsuits that could stifle innovation, Saab said.

Some experts speculate that courts may take a neutral stance and examine the context in which AI models generate potentially harmful responses.

In cases where the AI ​​model appears to be able to explain existing sources, the disclaimer may still apply. But chatbots like ChatGPT have been known to generate fictitious responses, which experts say may not be protected.

Hany Farid, a technologist and professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said it’s far-fetched to think that AI developers should be immune from lawsuits for the models they “program, train and deploy.”

"If companies can be held liable in civil lawsuits, they make safer products; if they are exempt, the products tend to be less safe," Farid said.

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