The article reports on how Google's new AI bot, Bard has provided false information about the discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope on Twitter. This has led to a drop in Google's shares, losing about $100bn in market value amid its ongoing AI race with Microsoft.
Since the launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT last year, it has increased market's interests in the use of AI. Companies like Baidu and even Magic circle law firm Allen & Overy launch its own ChatGPT-like AI bot, named Ernie and Harvey respectively. It is likely that other companies will follow suit as ChatGPT brings about a number of advantages.
One of the advantages of ChatGPT is that it can reduce time spent on administrative tasks, such as drafting a simple paragraph on a topic. It can also speed up time spent on search engines. Unlike the days before ChatGPT, we do not need to go through multiple links on Google (or any other search engine) to find an answer. With the ability to trawl through the Internet, ChatGPT would help organisations improve on their productivity or even customer service.
However, like most AI solutions, there are risks associated with using ChatGPT:
1. The information provided by ChatGPT may be inaccurate or irrelevant which may require some sort of quality check on its output. The quality of the output is only as good as the data that was used to train the AI model. If the data used to train ChatGPT is bad, it could lead to misinformation. Further, at the moment, ChatGPT has a limited knowledge of the world after 2021. It isn't aware of world leaders that came into power since 2021, and won't be able to answer questions about recent events.
2. Misuse of ChatGPT by malicious individuals, such as hackers. Although ChatGPT has been trained to not provide harmful answers, there is a way around it. Hackers can use ChatGPT to improve their malware code or help draft a phishing email that is human-like. This increased the cybersecurity risks for organisations.
From a legal standpoint, in my opinion, ChatGPT affects a number of practice areas such as commercial, technology and regulatory. With organisations seeking to implement their own AI chatbot or integrate OpenAI's ChatGPT, it brings opportunities for law firms to act as these companies' legal advisor, advising on legal and commercial issues arising from the implementation (e.g. issues relating to the data privacy, licensing, etc). As ChatGPT is still a new concept, there are many uncertainties around it, regulators would need to catch up with the technology. The UK government has recently announced that AI chatbots will fall under the new Online Harm Bill hence from a regulatory standpoint, law firms have the potential and are best place to advise clients in this area.
On the flip side, law firms can also use ChatGPT internally to facilitate with their daily tasks and advice to clients. Take Allen & Overy's Harvey as an example, Harvey helps lawyers generate legal documents, conduct research and due diligence and generate insights and recommendations in multiple languages.