US Regulators Officially Investigate ChatGPT for the First Time! FTC "fires" on OpenAI

Author: He Hao

Image source: Generated by Unbounded AI tool

** Media news on Thursday showed that OpenAI is being investigated by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The FTC sent a civil investigation request letter to OpenAI. The focus of the investigation includes whether OpenAI’s chat robot ChatGPT has harmed relevant individuals due to the release of false information, and how OpenAI handles related risks. **

** The FTC investigation marks the first time that U.S. regulators have formally launched a review of the risks posed by artificial intelligence chatbots. **The FTC, headed by Lina Khan, has broad powers to police unfair and deceptive business practices. ** The FTC’s investigation means that ChatGPT, currently the world’s hottest app, faces potential legal threats. **

The FTC wrote in the letter:

Please describe in detail the extent to which you have taken steps to address or mitigate the risk that your large language model product may generate false, misleading, or defamatory statements about real individuals.

Current lawmakers are particularly concerned about the risk of so-called deepfake videos that falsely depict real people taking embarrassing actions or saying embarrassing things.

However, relevant industry insiders believe that the FTC is too broad. The media quoted Adam Kovacevich, CEO of the Chamber of Progress, a tech trade group, as saying, “When ChatGPT says the wrong thing about someone and can cause damage to their reputation, is that an issue within the FTC’s jurisdiction? I don’t think that’s clear at all. These kinds of things are more in the realm of speech, in the realm of regulation of speech, which is beyond the purview of the FTC.”

The FTC also asked specific questions about OpenAI’s data security practices and privacy in the letter to see whether it engaged in unfair or deceptive practices. The FTC cited an incident in 2020 when OpenAI disclosed a bug that allowed users to see other people’s chat conversations and some payment-related information.

In all, the FTC’s letter raised dozens of issues. Other topics include: the technical details of ChatGPT’s design, the practice of training AI models, OpenAI’s marketing efforts, handling of users’ personal information, the context of user complaints, and how companies assess people’s perceptions of chatbot accuracy and reliability wait. The FTC asked OpenAI to share relevant internal materials.

The FTC’s move has early signs. In May of this year, the FTC issued a warning that it was closely watching how companies choose to use artificial intelligence technologies, including new generative artificial intelligence tools, to have a real and significant impact on consumers.

Lina Khan, who testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee on Thursday, faced strong criticism from Republican lawmakers for her tough enforcement stance. Asked at the hearing about the OpenAI investigation, Khan declined to comment, but said:

**The FTC’s broader concerns include that ChatGPT and other AI services are trained on vast amounts of data without checking what data is being used by these companies. We’ve heard reports of people’s sensitive information being leaked in response to inquiries from others. We hear that defamatory statements and completely untrue things are happening. That’s the kind of cheating we’re worried about. **

As the fire spreads around the world, generative artificial intelligence products are increasingly becoming the focus of regulatory agencies around the world. In May, the Biden administration sought to develop a national AI strategy to guard against misinformation and other potential shortcomings of the technology. In March of this year, Italian regulators once banned ChatGPT, and at the same time inspected the company’s collection of personal information. ChatGPT came back online a few weeks later in Italy after OpenAI made its privacy policy more accessible and rolled out a tool to verify users’ ages.