In August, a California family filed the first wrongful death lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, alleging that the company’s ChatGPT product had “coached” their 16-year-old son into committing suicide in April of this year. According to the complaint, Adam Raine began using the AI bot in the …
Read More »Suspect in Palisades Fire Allegedly Used ChatGPT to Generate Images of Burning Forests and Cities
More than eight months after the devastating Palisades Fire in Los Angeles County was finally contained, the Department of Justice today announced that it had made an arrest in connection with the massive January blaze, which killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of structures in coastal communities, becoming one of …
Read More »Grieving Parents Tell Congress That AI Chatbots Encouraged Their Children to Self-Harm
Three grieving parents delivered harrowing testimony before Congress on Tuesday, describing how their children had self-harmed — in two cases, taking their own lives — after sustained engagement with AI chatbots. Each accused the tech companies behind these products of prioritizing profit over the safety of young users, saying that …
Read More »Should We Really Be Calling It 'AI Psychosis'?
It was inevitable that once people starting noticing the phenomenon, they’d come up with a catchy, descriptive name for it. And sure enough, when one redditor sought help with a partner who had gone down a rabbit hole with ChatGPT to find “the answers to the universe,” she had to …
Read More »ChatGPT Lawsuit Over Teen's Suicide Could Lead to Big Tech Reckoning
On Tuesday, parents of a teen who died by suicide filed the first ever wrongful death lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, alleging that their son received detailed instructions on how to hang himself from the company’s popular chatbot, ChatGPT. The case may well serve as a landmark …
Read More »ChatGPT Lured Him Down a Philosophical Rabbit Hole. Then He Had to Find a Way Out
Like almost anyone eventually unmoored by it, J. started using ChatGPT out of idle curiosity in cutting-edge AI tech. “The first thing I did was, maybe, write a song about, like, a cat eating a pickle, something silly,” says J., a legal professional in California who asked to be identified …
Read More »Almost 40 Percent of Americans Trust Medical Advice From AI Chatbots
As AI technology becomes more integrated into every aspect of daily life, people have grown increasingly comfortable asking large language model chatbots for help with all kinds of questions — including, it seems, in matters of life and death. In a new survey of 2,000 Americans commissioned from research consultancy …
Read More »People With Body Dysmorphia Are Spiraling Out After Asking AI to Rate Their Looks
“This is a low-attractiveness presentation, based on weak bone structure, muted features, and absence of form or presence,” reads a ChatGPT message shared in screenshots on Reddit. “You look like someone who has faded into the background of their own life.” The harsh assessment of the user’s appearance, based on …
Read More »ChatGPT Is Helping Women Get Pregnant
Among the questions Mandy Hoskinson asked ChatGPT while she was trying to conceive a child: How long, on average, does it take 32-year-olds to get pregnant? Is it helpful to elevate your legs after sex? Is eating special foods beneficial for conception? This was all last year. Now, Hoskinson is …
Read More »Are Em Dashes Really a Sign of AI Writing?
In the escalating arms race between AI models like ChatGPT and human beings trying to determine if what they’re reading was machine-generated, there is no easy or surefire way to spot the bot — or is there? “I — keep — seeing — weird — long — dashes — in …
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