Microsoft Copilot Falsely Accuses Journalist Martin Bernklau of Crimes

August 16, 2024

Microsoft Copilot, an AI tool, has allegedly produced defamatory content falsely accusing veteran court reporter Martin Bernklau of serious crimes such as child abuse and fraud. The generated content not only implicated Bernklau in multiple crimes he covered as a journalist but also shared his personal contact details. Despite Microsoft's efforts to remove the false entries, they reportedly reappeared. This incident underscores the importance of responsible AI governance and guardrails for AI to prevent such harmful incidents.

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Matched TAIM controls

Suggested mapping from embedding similarity (not a formal assessment). Browse all TAIM controls

MEASURE 2.6 — similarity 0.645, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 4.1 — similarity 0.642, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 4.2 — similarity 0.635, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Alleged deployer: microsoft, microsoft-copilot
Alleged developer: microsoft
Alleged harmed parties: martin-bernklau

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/770

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide

We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.