Description: In August 2024, ChatGPT is reported to have falsely claimed that Norwegian citizen Arve Hjalmar Holmen had killed his two sons and been sentenced to 21 years in prison. The fabricated response allegedly included specific details about the supposed crime, despite Holmen never being accused or convicted of any offense. The incident prompted a GDPR complaint for defamation and inaccurate personal data.
Editor Notes: Timeline notes: The incident date of 08/15/2024 is an approximation; the incident is reported to have occurred sometime in August 2024. Reporting on this incident arose on 03/20/2025.
Entities
View all entitiesAlleged: OpenAI and ChatGPT developed and deployed an AI system, which harmed Arve Hjalmar Holmen.
Alleged implicated AI system: ChatGPT
Incident Stats
Incident ID
998
Report Count
2
Incident Date
2024-08-15
Editors
Daniel Atherton
Incident Reports
Reports Timeline
A Norwegian man has filed a complaint after ChatGPT falsely told him he had killed two of his sons and been jailed for 21 years.
Arve Hjalmar Holmen has contacted the Norwegian Data Protection Authority and demanded the chatbot's maker, Ope…
Variants
A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.
Similar Incidents
Did our AI mess up? Flag the unrelated incidents
Similar Incidents
Did our AI mess up? Flag the unrelated incidents