The Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) has filed a complaint with the European Ombudsman against the European Commission accusing it of using generative AI in public documents.
The ICCL said that a recent response from the Commission to an access to documents request revealed that at least one link had been generated using OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
The ICCL has expressed concerns that generative AI systems sometimes give incorrect answers and that EU institutions have a duty to provide accurate information.
These generative AI systems give sometimes correct and sometimes wrong information. The errors are not bugs, but by design. They “predict” next words based on probabilities. Facts are not their forte.
EU institutions have a duty to provide accurate information. By relying on bullshit generators, they might violate their obligation under the treaties to provide citizens with the right to good administration.
In addition, it is likely that this use of generative AI is a violation of the Commission’s own guidelines for staff on the use of online generative artificial intelligence tools, which says “Staff shall never directly replicate the output of a generative AI model in public documents.”
ICCL Enforce Senior Fellow, Dr Kris Shrishak, said today:
“Public bodies like the European Commission should always be transparent and disclose if a generative AI tool is used in any public document, even if the output from such tools has been assessed by their staff. In such a disclosure, specific details about the tools should also be mentioned for transparency.”
“If public bodies use generative AI tool in public documents, then the burden of proving the veracity should be on them and not on the recipients to rebut claims. Otherwise, generative AI tools should not be used.”
