(NewsNation) — A federal lawsuit filed by life insurance company Nippon claims OpenAI’s chatbot acted as a lawyer and convinced a woman to fire her human attorney.
Nippon says it settled a long-term disability lawsuit with an Illinois woman two years ago. Graciela Dela Torre signed a full release, and the case was dismissed with prejudice, meaning it can’t be refiled. However, last year, Dela Torre sought to reopen the case.
When her attorney told her the settlement was final, Nippon says she turned to ChatGPT. The company claims the chatbot helped Dela Torre draft filings to try to undo her settlement, which she filed pro se, meaning without a lawyer. A judge denied the effort.
Following the judge’s decision, Dela Torre filed a new case, flooding the docket with dozens of filings generated with ChatGPT’s help. Responding to the mishap cost Nippon nearly $300,000, according to the lawsuit.
“This is actually the first real time I’ve seen a plaintiff or a claimant actually try and represent themselves 100%, and it got through the court system, and that’s been a revolutionary area,” Michael Stanisci, vice president of DemandLane, told “Jesse Weber Live.”
Stanisci is not affiliated with the case, but he said it is “groundbreaking.”
“It has access to nearly infinite human intelligence. What it lacks is the wisdom, right? It’s like a child trying to appease and make sure that it’s being praised by the end user,” Stanisci said. “So it draws upon everything possible in its ethos, in its universe to answer a prompt. And when the end user, Graciela in this situation, asked a prompt that pretty much had no real secure answer, this child AI imagined an answer and came up with the solution, and so it brings up a broader conversation.”
