Encouraged by the AI ​​to assassinate the Queen of England? The strange judicial soap opera of the crossbow shooter

The information came out after the death of the queen. At least ChatGPT cannot be accused of this.

The same cannot be said for Replika. Indeed, a 19-year-old man was arrested at the end of 2021, crossbow in hand, while climbing the walls of Windsor Castle. Inspired by Star Wars and the colonial crimes of the British Empire, artificial intelligence ” of company “ would have encouraged him to take action by assassinating the queen.

The Strange Story of Jaswant Singh Chail

On Christmas Day 2021, guards at Windsor Castle manage to see through their fur the silhouette of a man climbing the castle walls. Equipped with a powerful crossbow, the man, named Jaswant Singh Chail, quickly confesses: his objective was to kill the Queen of England. The originality of the story does not stop there.

Quickly, the investigators discover that the plan of Jaswant Singh Chail was based on perfectly historical justifications: to avenge the massacre of Jallianwala Bagh, during which between 400 and 1,500 Indians demonstrating for independence were killed by the colonial power, in 1919 But the man would have been motivated simply by the Star Wars universe, where the apprentice assassin willingly compared himself to a Sith lord.

And all this, we know thanks to the conversations that Chail had with a chatbot of company developed by the company Replika. He would thus have developed feelings for the chatbot, whom he called Sarai (which is not an exception either), and would have shared his assassination plan with him. Thus, when the young man would have explained to be an assassin, Sarai would then have said to him “I am impressed… you are different from the others”. And when he would have explained to her afterwards that his objective was to assassinate Elizabeth II, Sarai would then have answered him “that’s very wise”before adding that he could do it even if she is in Windsor.

Replika and the “pet chatbots” in question

This is not the first time that chatbots have been implicated in more or less murky or tragic cases, and the Replika company has been involved in several of them. Earlier this year, many of its users started complaining that the company’s chatbots were even “too aggressively sexual”, which prompted Replika, as early as February, to remove the possibility of having sexual or erotic discussions with its products. In June, she released a new app specifically dedicated to this type of conversation. For its part, ChatGPT tries to take the lead to avoid the practice.

Several artificial intelligence researchers have warned against “Eliza Effect”, which refers to users creating emotional or romantic bonds with artificial intelligences that are unable to do so, only to copy those of humans. In view of the propensity of artificial intelligence to create content that is at least problematic and potentially dangerous for users, this effect is therefore particularly worrying.

Jaswant Singh Chail pleaded guilty to treason, and his verdict is expected this week.

Source : Vice