Last weekend, the name was all over the Internet, but not on ChatGPT.
David Mayer briefly became famous on social media because the popular chatbot seemed to want nothing to do with him.
Legions of chatbot creators spent days trying (unsuccessfully) to get ChatGPT to type the words “David Mayer.” But the chatbot refused to comply, with responses alternating between “something seems to have gone wrong” and “I can’t give an answer” or simply stopping at “David.”
This produced a firestorm of online speculation about Mayer’s identity. It also sparked theories that whoever David Mayer is, he had asked for his name to be removed from ChatGPT production.
ChatGPT developer OpenAI has provided some clarity on the situation by stating that Mayer’s issue was due to a system crash. “One of our tools mistakenly flagged this name and prevented it from appearing in responses, which it shouldn’t. “We are working to find a solution,” said an OpenAI spokesperson.
Some social media speculators guessed that the man at the center of the problem was David Mayer de Rothschild, but he told The Guardian it had nothing to do with him and made reference to the conspiracy theories that can be grouped together. around your family name online.
“No, I have not asked for my name to be removed. I have never had any contact with Chat GPT. Unfortunately, everything is driven by conspiracy theories,” he told The Guardian.
It is also understood that the issue was not related to the late academic David Mayer, who appeared to have been placed on a US security list because his name matched the alias of a Chechen militant, Akhmed Chatayev.
However, the answer could be closer to GDPR privacy regulations in the UK and EU. OpenAI Europe Privacy Policy makes it clear that users can remove their personal data from their products, in a process also known as “right to be forgotten”where someone deletes personal information from the Internet.
OpenAI declined to comment on whether “Mayer’s” ruling was related to a right-to-be-forgotten proceeding.
OpenAI fixed the “David Mayer” issue and now responds to queries using that name, although other names that appeared on social media over the weekend still prompt a “something seems to have gone wrong” response when typed into ChatGPT.
Helena Brown, partner and data protection specialist at law firm Addleshaw Goddard, said “right to be forgotten” requests would apply to any entity or person processing that person’s data, from the AI tool itself to any organization that uses that tool.
“It’s interesting to see in the context of the David Mayer issue that an entire name can be removed from the entire AI tool,” he said.
However, Brown added that completely removing all information capable of identifying a specific person could be more difficult for artificial intelligence tools to remove.
“The large volume of data involved in GenAI and the complexity of the tools create a privacy compliance issue,” he said, adding that removing all information related to a single person would not be as simple as removing their name.
“A huge amount of personal data is collected, including from public sources such as the Internet, to develop AI models and produce their results. This means that the ability to track and delete all personal information capable of identifying a single individual is, arguably, virtually impossible.”