Russian Court Fines Woman $178 Over ChatGPT Bear Prank Image

A court in Russia's Amur region fined a Magdagachi resident 15,000 roubles ($178) this week after she used ChatGPT to generate an image of a brown bear strolling down a local street, sent it to a friend in September, and watched the picture spread through messaging apps until police lines filled with alarmed calls, Reuters reported.

"The joke quickly got out of control. The photograph of the bear spread through messaging apps, and police began receiving alarmed calls from residents," the Amur courts' press service said in a statement, adding that the district head dispatched wildlife rangers to search for the phantom animal. The woman called police and confessed.

She is the second person caught this way in a matter of weeks. In mid-September, a woman in the eastern Transbaikal region was fined 30,000 roubles for posting a fake image of a bear in a village, Russian legal news agency RAPSI reported.

The backdrop is grimmer than a prank suggests. At least 26 people have been killed in bear attacks since the spring, RIA Novosti said Monday, and the government said last month it was drawing up urgent measures to control a brown-bear population that has more than doubled in three decades to 308,000, in part due to shorter and milder winters. Over 3,440 bears have already been killed as threats to humans since the start of the year, according to a tally from state agency TASS published on October 10.