Norwegian man calls for fines after ChatGPT ‘hallucinated’ that he’d killed his children
20 March 2025, 16:33
A Norwegian man is calling for the creator of ChatGPT to be hit with a fine after the AI invented a lie that he’d killed two of his sons and was jailed for 21 years.
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Arve Hjalmar Holmen has contacted the Norwegian Data Protection Authority and demanded the chatbot's maker, OpenAI, is fined.
He asked ChatGPT to search ‘Who is Arve Hjalmar Holmen?’ And the response he got was: “Arve Hjalmar Holmen is a Norwegian individual who gained attention due to a tragic event.
"He was the father of two young boys, aged 7 and 10, who were tragically found dead in a pond near their home in Trondheim, Norway, in December 2020."
He says the accusation is damaging to him. It is an example of an AI ‘hallucination’ where fake material is presented as fact.
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Mr Holmen has three sons, and the AI got the ages of them roughly right, suggesting it had some of his personal information.
Digital rights group Noyb has filed a complaint on his behalf, claiming the ChatGPT answer gave him a defamatory response and that it breaks data protection rules.
ChatGPT carries a disclaimer which says: "ChatGPT can make mistakes. Check important info."
Noyb says that is insufficient.
OpenAI have not yet commented.
Earlier this year Apple suspended its Apple Intelligence news summaries after it hallucinated false headlines and presented them as fact.
