On Wednesday, the Department of Justice announced the arrest of Jonathan Rinderknecht, who was federally charged for setting the blaze that eventually became the massive and deadly Palisades Fire, which ravaged coastal communities of Los Angeles County throughout the month of January.

Authorities mentioned various pieces of evidence that they said supported the case against Rinderknecht, but they spotlighted a particularly novel one : records of his exchanges with ChatGPT . The 29-year-old Florida man allegedly prompted OpenAI ‘s chatbot to create images of cities and forests engulfed in flames, told it about feeling “liberated” after burning a Bible, and, shortly after igniting a brush fire just after midnight on New Year’s Day, asked it, “Are you at fault if a fire is lift [sic]

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