ABSTRACT
Can ChatGPT commit libel? Defamation of a public figure requires a false statement of fact made with knowledge or reckless disregard of its falsity. But do these doctrines of meaning and knowledge, created with humans in mind, even make sense when the ‘defendant’ is a computer system? I argue that answering these legal questions requires us to confront deep philosophical problems about the nature of language and thought: can an AI produce meaning, and can an AI have knowledge?
To be sure, lawyers do not have to accept the answers that philosophers of language and mind have given. The legal system has always indulged in a healthy artificiality about artificial persons, and if corporations can be human enough to commit defamation, so can computers. But it is important to understand why there is a problem in the first place—or rather, why there are two problems, because the issue of AI meaning and the issue of AI knowledge bear on each other but are not the same.
Grimmelmann, James, The Defamation Machine (August 1, 2024).
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