Implications of ChatGPT Technology on Criminal Law
Implications of ChatGPT Technology on Criminal Law

Author(s): Silviu-Gabriel Barbu, Vasile Coman
Subject(s): Criminal Law, Social Informatics, ICT Information and Communications Technologies, Sociology of Law
Published by: ADJURIS – International Academic Publisher
Keywords: ChatGPT; OpenAI; artificial intelligence (AI); criminal law; criminal offence;
Summary/Abstract: The scientific community has been discussing for a long time about the potential of creating an artificial, non-biological, impartial machine with human intelligence, considering that such an innovation with emotional - and not only computational - intelligence could bring many benefits to society, including the legal world. Recently introduced (November 2022) in a more publicly accessible form, the ChatGPT (Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer) technology is one such artificial intelligence application, part of the OpenAI project, and is essentially built as a conversational interface with the potential to deliver results in a human-like manner. As an artificially intelligent chat-bot, ChatGPT has several functions subsumed to its use and performance, that are rather extensive, and there is a concern whether the ChatGPT technology may be used for judicial decision-making, in which context arises the question whether it can also be hijacked in order to commit criminal offences. The answer is positive, but accepting this fact raises some possible issues in criminal law enforcement practice such as establishing the guilt, the dialogue with the personal nature of the criminal liability, adapting the criminal sanction system to the specific environment of commission, and others, discussed in this article. ChatGPT is certainly the chat-bot of the moment and perhaps even of the year 2023. Formal artificial intelligence (AI) is still in its infancy, but despite its limitations, the ChatGPT technology can already be considered impressive in its timeliness and evolution compared to other automated chats or applications of robotics, as it has the capacity to communicate credibly and convincingly, as a human interlocutor and in real time.

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