Does Section 230 Protect ChatGPT?
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 9 March 2023
⏱️ 53 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
During recent oral arguments in Gonzalez v. Google, a Supreme Court case concerning the scope of liability protections for internet platforms, Justice Neil Gorsuch asked a thought-provoking question. Does Section 230, the statute that shields websites from liability for third-party content, apply to a generative AI model like ChatGPT?
Luckily, Matt Perault of the Center on Technology Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill had already been thinking about this question and published a Lawfare article arguing that 230’s protections wouldn’t extend to content generated by AI. Lawfare Senior Editors Quinta Jurecic and Alan Rozenshtein sat down with Matt and Jess Miers, legal advocacy counsel at the Chamber of Progress, to debate whether ChatGPT’s output constitutes third-party content, whether companies like OpenAI should be immune for the output of their products, and why you might want to sue a chatbot in the first place.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising. |
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| 0:18.0 | Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, |
| 0:22.0 | rational security, chatter, law fair no bull and the aftermath. |
| 0:52.0 | I think there is a viable position that section 230 does protect products like chat gpt. |
| 1:04.0 | Essentially, and this point is not, is not taken well by the technologist. |
| 1:10.0 | I'll just sort of throw that out there. |
| 1:12.0 | But in my opinion, at this current point in time, chat gpt operates a lot like Google search |
| 1:18.0 | on or any search engine for that matter. A user inputs a query and the search engine responds |
| 1:24.0 | with third party content. |
| 1:26.0 | I'm Quintet Jurassic, senior editor at LawFair. |
| 1:30.0 | And this is the LawFair podcast March 9, 2023. |
| 1:36.0 | Today, we're bringing you an episode of Arbiters of Truth, |
| 1:40.0 | our occasional series on the information ecosystem. |
| 1:42.0 | During recent oral arguments in Gonzales v. Google, |
| 1:46.0 | a Supreme Court case concerning the scope of liability protections for internet platforms, |
| 1:52.0 | just as Neil Gorsuch asked a thought provoking question. |
| 1:56.0 | Does section 230, the statute that shields websites for liability for third party content, |
| 2:02.0 | apply to a generative AI model like chat gpt. |
| 2:06.0 | Luckily, Matt Peroll of the Center on Technology Policy |
... |
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