Description: Microsoft's Copilot is reported to have falsely accused veteran court reporter Martin Bernklau of committing serious crimes, including child abuse and fraud. The tool is described as having generated defamatory content that not only accused Bernklau of multiple crimes he covered as a journalist but also provided his personal contact details. Attempts by Microsoft to remove the false entries were only temporarily successful, as the defamatory information reportedly reappeared.
Entities
View all entitiesAlleged: Microsoft developed an AI system deployed by Microsoft and Microsoft Copilot, which harmed Martin Bernklau.
Incident Stats
Incident ID
770
Report Count
1
Incident Date
2024-08-16
Editors
Incident Reports
Reports Timeline
the-decoder.com · 2024
- View the original report at its source
- View the report at the Internet Archive
Language models generate text based on statistical probabilities. This led to serious false accusations against a veteran court reporter by Microsoft's Copilot.
German journalist Martin Bernklau typed his name and location into Microsoft's …
Variants
A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.
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