The FTC is looking into whether OpenAI, the developer of the artificial-intelligence chatbot ChatGPT, “engaged in unfair or deceptive privacy or data security practices or engaged in unfair or deceptive practices relating to risks of harm to consumers, including reputational harm,” according to a letter the regulatory body sent to the company.
The agency’s probe into OpenAI was first reported by the Washington Post, which shared a redacted copy of the letter to the company (at this link). The time period for the FTC’s information requests to San Francisco-based OpenAI date from June 1, 2020, “until the date of full and complete compliance” with the investigation, which is technically called a “civil investigative demand” (CID).
Among the info the FTC is asking from OpenAI is a “description of any refining the Company actually undertook in order to correct or remediate any Large Language Model’s propensity to ‘hallucinate’ or to reveal any Personal Information,” per the letter.
OpenAI, founded in 2015, introduced the first publicly available version of ChatGPT in November 2022. The chatbot is able to generate seemingly coherent texts on a wide range of topics — while it has on occasion been shown to entirely make things up.
Following news reports of the investigation, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman tweeted, “it is very disappointing to see the FTC’s request start with a leak and does not help build trust. that said, it’s super important to us that out technology is safe and pro-consumer, and we are confident we follow the law. of course we will work with the FTC.”
Altman continued, “we built GPT-4 on top of years of safety research and spent 6+ months after we finished initial training making it safer and more aligned before releasing it. we protect user privacy and design our systems to learn about the world, not private individuals.” He also wrote, “we’re transparent about the limitations of our technology, especially when we fall short. and our capped-profits structure means we aren’t incentivized to make unlimited returns.”
Separately, OpenAI is facing various legal challenges. Those include a defamation lawsuit filed by a talk show host, who alleged ChatGPT invented false legal claims against him; and a lawsuit in which Sarah Silverman is among plaintiffs alleging OpenAI’s large language model illegally used their copyrighted works. OpenAI has not commented on either of those lawsuits.
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