Hepburn Shire mayor Brian Hood may launch world-first ChatGPT defamation lawsuit

Prior to becoming the mayor of Hepburn Shire Council in central Victoria, Mr Hood was a whistleblower in the 2011 Securency bribery scandal, where a subsidiary of the Reserve Bank of Australia was bribing public officials in Indonesia, Malaysia and Nepal.

When asked about the bribery scandal, ChatGPT falsely states Mr Hood as being a perpetrator, and that he had spent time in prison as a result of the offending.

According to reporting in The Age, Mr Hood's lawyers have since contacted ChatGPT's creators, San Francisco based OpenAI, with a letter of complaint - giving them 28 days to remove the statements or risk a defamation lawsuit.

The potential lawsuit would be a world first in the burgeoning AI chatbot industry.

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"It would potentially be a landmark moment in the sense that it's applying this defamation law to a new area of artificial intelligence and publication in the IT space," James Naughton, a partner at Hood's law firm Gordon Legal, told Reuters.

"He's an elected official, his reputation is central to his role.... so it makes a difference to him if people in his community are accessing this material," Mr Naughton said.

ChatGPT, launched in 2022, is a AI chatbot which simulates human conversations. The AI is able to answer questions, write emails and many other functions, including composing music and playing naughts and crosses.

The program has enjoyed a viral surge in popularity online, as people find increasing obscure and entertaining ways to interact with the AI.

ChatGPT's parent company OpenAI was given a sizable investment of $14 billion by American tech giant Microsoft, who implemented the AI into their Bing search engine.

The Courier has contacted Mr Hood and Gordon Legal for comment.