The Rise of ChatGPT and The Legal Implications That Will Ensue

In his book Robot Rules, Jacob Turner said that defining Artificial Intelligence (AI) ‘can resemble chasing the horizon: as soon as you get to where it was, it has moved somewhere into the distance’.  This can be applied to the leaps and bounds AI chatbots have taken in recent years. The latest player getting all the attention is ChatGPT.

What is ChatGPT

ChatGPT (which stands for Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer) is an AI chatbot developed by OpenAI, an American AI research laboratory co-founded by Elon Musk.

The model has been trained on a massive dataset of text from the Internet and can generate high-quality and coherent responses to a wide range of natural language input, including questions, statements, and conversational cues. It also has a lot of uses in education, the corporate world and day-to-day life with the ability to suggest essay plans, explain difficult concepts, compile information and answer basic questions.

The latest version of the model, known as GPT-3, is seen as one of the most powerful language models ever developed, with 175bn parameters and the ability to perform a wide range of natural language processing tasks.

The Rise of ChatGPT and AI Chatbots

ChatGPT launched in November 2022. According to data firm Similarweb, in January 2023, ChatGPT recorded about 590m visits from 100m unique visitors. However, at times of peak demand, only users with a ChatGPT Plus subscription can access the tool.

The rise of generative AI models stretches beyond ChatGPT. Indeed, shares in small AI groups have soared this year. This includes shares in C3.ai and BigBear.ai that have shot up by 103 per cent and 561 per cent respectively since the start of 2023.

This results in an ongoing battle between tech giants to incorporate these systems into their own products. Microsoft is using the technology behind ChatGPT to enhance its Bing search engine and Edge web browser. In response, Google introduced “Bard”. However, an error during a demo of this AI cost the company over $100bn in market value.

The Legal Implications that Ensue

Despite its impressive capabilities, the rise of ChatGPT also raises important legal and ethical questions. The chatbot itself is aware of the legal issues. When prompted on the subject, ChatGPT responds:

‘if ChatGPT is used in a customer service context, there may be legal requirements related to data privacy and protection, as well as regulations related to consumer protection and marketing practices’

It then goes on to add:

‘if ChatGPT generates responses that could be considered defamatory, discriminatory, or otherwise harmful, there may be legal implications related to liability for such content. In such cases, the responsibility for the content generated by ChatGPT may fall on the individuals or organizations that developed, trained, and deployed the AI model.’

Law firm Fieldfisher produced an insight paper in which it discussed such potential legal issues at hand. It considers questions such as liability for offensive; harmful content output or GDPR compliance when dealing with personal information.

Conclusion

The rise of ChatGPT is a remarkable example of the rapid pace of development in AI and the potential for these technologies to transform the way we live and work. However, as with any new technology, there are important legal and ethical questions that must be considered. Policymakers, researchers and industry stakeholders will have to address them to ensure that the benefits of these technologies are realized responsibly.

By Scott Hickman