Looks Like We Have Our First ChatGPT Arrest

Mere mortals have done no shortage of tongue-wagging and fretting over ChatGPT: The "godfather" of AI is done with it, Elon Musk is going to reinvent it, and now China has apparently given us our first arrest over it. As Quartz reports, China arrested a man in Gansu province, identified only by the surname of Hong, for the offense of using ChatGPT to generate a story about a fake train crash involving fatalities and subsequently publishing it online.

The problem (other than the obvious why?): ChatGPT is illegal in China—which tends to keep an eye on its people's internet habits—and has been since Jan. 10, per Reuters. The story, uploaded to Chinese social media on April 25, garnered a relatively meager total of 15,000 hits before authorities cracked down. Per Quartz, Hong faces a charge of "picking quarrels and provoking trouble," which could land him five years in prison if convicted.