Legal Woes: ChatGPT Faces Lawsuit Amidst Controversy

0:00Today on the podcast, we're going to be covering some high profile lawsuits against ChatGPT, and also why 65 % of websites are about to get very direct access to AI. So stay tuned and we are going to dive in. The first thing I want to talk about is the fact that there is a radio host from Georgia named Mark Walter. He is currently suing OpenAI over claims that ChatGPT said he essentially embezzled funds from a gun rights nonprofit. So this is just like a classic case, I think, of ChatGPT hallucinating that we've seen before. This isn't anything super new. There was also another story earlier this year where a mayor in Australia said he was going to sue ChatGPT because I believe it said he, what did it say, he committed like financial fraud or something.

0:49In any case, this isn't something like super new, this concept. I do find this kind of funny and very ludicrous. I think with all of the disclaimers ChatGPT has around, you know, it being a research tool and it being a beta and literally having disclaimers that it can it's known to make stuff up. I think it's kind of funny when people have this this idea that I don't know it's you can like sue it for saying something wrong this case in general is kind of interesting I think it's kind of funny essentially what happened was that there was someone named Fred Real so he is an editor over at a over at a gun outlet called Ammo Land and he was doing some research for an article anyways he was asking about a case called Second Amendment Foundation versus Ferguson.

1:36And he was, you know, he's doing some research on for this article. And when he asked Chad Gipti for a summary of that case, essentially, it brought up this other guy named Walters. And it said that the case was about Walters being the chief financial officer, and that he had defrauded and embezzled funds from the organization. So it's kind of funny, like, it like, because on the one hand, I'm like, well, is this legit did they just like prompt it to say something crazy like you know make up a story about why walters embezzled money from blah blah blah and then chad gpt could just like make up a story about that and then i don't know if they wanted to like just get clicks or kind of you know make some sort of big deal um that would be easy however this guy wasn't brought up at all it was just straight up you know they were asking them or one reporter a news reporter was asking chad gpt about a case and then it brought that up and I think that he went and told the guy and then there's this whole thing because apparently Walters and everyone worked for the foundation mentioned and in the entire like Second Amendment Foundation versus Ferguson filing, Walters name never appeared anywhere.

2:41So it's just like super random that somehow it pulled this guy named Walter into this and spit that out. So can you sue chat GPT for saying something wrong? I think it's going to be interesting. Nothing's disclosed in this yet, and so I think we're going to find out what the case is. Personally, I hope that ChadGPT wins this. I think it's kind of ridiculous. You should fact check everything that comes out of ChadGPT. It's, you know, an AI model, and there's no way to make it perfect, and I think the alternative is, like, if you really could sue and win, then ChadGPT would get sued into oblivion for all the random things that it's not perfect at, and I don't think it can ever be perfect.

3:21And so I think in that case, it would not really be a viable product. And since it's such a beneficial product in so many areas, I personally think we should leave it so you can't sue it. But that's just me. It'll be interesting to see what happens. The other thing I wanted to talk about today is the fact that WordPress, which is according to HubSpot and a lot of other reports, WordPress is used by around 65 % of all websites using a content management system. So like there are some webs, there's a lot of websites that people might be like coding by hand. So excluding, you know, those, anyone that's using something like Wix or Squarespace or WordPress or anything else, that's about 65 % of all of those.

4:02And I think to be fair, it's still like 43 % of all websites, period on the internet. So it's like, come on, this is at least half of the websites on the internet. And they are all going to be getting access to AI through a new plugin. that WordPress is launching called Jetpack AI Assistant. It's going to be available for free for a limited time. So I think what's interesting is that Jetpack users get 20 free requests, and then they have to pay 10 bucks a month after that. And Jetpack, the plugin, it's something that you've had to pay for in the past as well. So, you know, this isn't anything crazy.

4:37But essentially, I think this is just kind of like the latest example of AI text generation being added to software. And I think, you know, this is the biggest blogging and content management platform in the world. And I really think we're going to start seeing a lot more proliferation of AI into everything that is going on. Now, the reason that I think that this story is like interesting, because it's like, Oh, yeah, whatever, another chat GPT integration into a software. The reason I think this is important is because this is the number one blogging medium, meaning up until this point, like Google has said, if you write content with AI, we're going to, um, you know, lower it in the rankings, yada, yada.

5:16But what's, what I think is interesting with this is with an integration like this, like, let's say this is on every single, you know, blog essentially. And let's say every single blog starts using AI to help augment their articles. Doesn't mean they're going to write the whole thing by chat. Just let it be like, maybe they're writing and they're like, Hey, write me a paragraph about X, Y, and Z based off of these five research points. and it spits something out and they're like, okay, awesome. This is perfect. They edit a couple of words and keep going. Then Google goes in and detects like, Hey, this is written by AI de rank.

5:44Like, here's what I'm, here's what I'm saying. I think that it is a little bit ludicrous to say we have to delist, devalue or ban all AI content because inevitably there is going to be a lot of stuff written by AI. And that doesn't mean it's just like, we ask it to write a full on article. But like when you're developing something or you want to write it more concisely or quickly, I mean, you feed it a bunch of information and say, you know, based off of these like five different articles, like make the point that X, Y, and Z is important and make sure that you discuss like these three points and it writes something for you really quickly.

6:18And you're like, Oh, gee, thanks. I like save me some time. You paste that paragraph and you might edit a couple words. I think it's ludicrous to say that like people aren't gonna like want to use that we're not going to speed up the ability to share information and concepts and ideas with that with that workflow. And so by, by demoting it in Google, or essentially punishing it, I think is really, I don't know, to me, it seems like a really big bummer, because it's, it seems kind of anti progress, where I see AI helping you write something better or faster. And now we're going to be punishing it.

6:52And I mean, it's similar to, you know, teachers that are failing their classes if they use AI to help them write stuff. It's like, I don't know, on the one hand, I'm like, yeah, sure, it's great to learn to write things. But on the other hand, is it really, is it really that important that you write every word? Or is it important that you thought logically about the arguments you're making, and you bring in all of the data points, and you think of all the concepts you want to tie together, and then using AI to help you do that? Is that really so bad? So I think that's gonna be the debate that we have.

7:25I do think this is a really cool move by WordPress. This is going to have some big implications. Like inevitably, a lot of websites that you stumble across, whether that's for recipes or other things, are going to be there. So I think that this is going to be pretty interesting to see how this continues to proliferate AI into everything we do and everything we see on the internet today. And the one other thing I would want to bring up is the fact that I wonder how important it is, even for people to be able to write like a lot of this AI content when you can think of a world. Now, I'm not going to say like Google and Google search results are going to be irrelevant because obviously there's so much great content out there.

8:03But like you could think of a world where people can get a lot of answers from ChatGPT. And so maybe, you know, web traffic on a lot of these websites goes down. I would be curious to see if web traffic overall to websites has gone down since ChatGPT came out because a lot of people were able to get the answers directly on ChatGPT to questions they had instead of having to go to different websites. Now, of course, you always have to fact check everything out of ChatGPT, as we mentioned in the earlier story. So I think that does throw a wrench in it and not a wrench in it, but I think that is an important point that will make sure that, you know, a lot of these different websites continue to be relevant.

8:40I think putting sources, citing your sources inside of ChatGPT is important to make sure that the answers are well thought out. And I think this is probably just the next step in sharing and consolidating information to the masses to help people learn more about the world around them.