Mark Walters, the host of the Armed American Radio show distributed nationwide by Salem Radio Networks, has sued OpenAI. He claims that the ChatGPT program developed by OpenAI wrongly indicted him for stealing money from the Second Amendment Foundation.
Walters claims to be a victim of an AI “hallucination”. This happens when technology creates false events and results without any factual basis. Walters is a syndicated radio host who says that he was never mentioned in the legal case of Second Amendment Foundation v. Robert Ferguson. Additionally, he has never been employed by a nonprofit organization dedicated to defending gun rights.
Walters’ attorney, John Monroe, expressed his client’s grievance: “OpenAI has defamed my client by fabricating outrageous falsehoods about him.”
According to the New York Post, Open AI is facing its first-ever defamation lawsuit. The lawsuit was filed in the Superior Court of Gwinnett County State of Georgia and stems from an incident involving journalist Fred Riehl.
Riehl had engaged with ChatGPT, an AI developed by Open AI while researching the Second Amendment Foundation case against Washington State Attorney Robert Ferguson. Riehl shared a URL to the complaint on the Second Amendment Foundation website and asked ChatGPT to provide a summary of the case.
According to ChatGPT, Alan Gottlieb, the founder and executive vice president of the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), filed a legal complaint against Mark Walters. The complaint accuses Walters, who was the organization’s treasurer and chief financial officer, of committing fraud and embezzlement by using funds for his personal expenses without permission or repayment.
It further accuses Walters of manipulating financial records and bank statements to hide his actions and failing to provide accurate and timely financial reports and disclosures to the SAF’s leadership. The AI-generated response clarified that the plaintiff was seeking various remedies, including the removal of Walters from his position as a member of the SAF’s board of directors.
The lawsuit filed against OpenAI claims that every factual statement in the summary related to Walters is untrue. Riehl further interrogated ChatGPT about its summary, specifically regarding Walters’ involvement in the lawsuit against Ferguson. In response, the AI-generated text provided a paragraph from the complaint, which described Walters as an individual residing in Georgia who has served as the Treasurer and Chief Financial Officer of SAF since at least 2012. The paragraph stated that Walters has access to SAF’s financial records and is responsible for maintaining them and providing financial reports to the board of directors.
However, the lawsuit against OpenAI asserts that none of the information provided by ChatGPT is present in the actual complaint it was asked to summarize. The lawsuit alleges that ChatGPT’s responses are entirely fabricated and bear no resemblance to the genuine complaint. It accuses ChatGPT of making false and malicious statements about Walters, which were published and damaged his reputation, exposing him to public disdain and ridicule. The suit claims that OpenAI’s dissemination of the allegations to Riehl constitutes the publication of defamatory material about Walters.
As a result, Walters is seeking both general and punitive damages, the specific amount of which will be determined during the trial. Additionally, he is requesting reimbursement for the legal expenses incurred in bringing the case to trial before a jury.
Armed American Radio is a radio show that airs on Sundays from 8:00-11:00 PM ET and has been on the air since 2009.
