Chatgpt Image Snares Suspect in Deadly Pacific Palisades Fire

There were two additional fire-related chats cited in TFA:

> Mr Rinderknecht also asked ChatGPT: "Are you at fault if a fire is lift [sic] because of your cigarettes?" Investigators said the suspect wanted to "preserve evidence of himself trying to assist in the suppression of the fire". "He wanted to create evidence regarding a more innocent explanation for the cause of the fire," the indictment said.

> A month before allegedly setting the fire, Mr Rinderknecht allegedly inputted a prompt to ChatGPT that included the text: "I literally burnt the Bible that I had. It felt amazing. I felt so liberated."

Perhaps more incriminating, he reported the fire via a 911 call while incorrectly claiming where he was located. Confusing to me is that the fire took seven days to conflagrate. So was the 911 call the night of starting it or a week later? If the night of, why wasn't it extinguished? If a week later, was he nearby adding fuel to it or something?

I wonder if ChatGPT can be cross examined at trial?

Prosecutor: Did the defendant do it?

ChatGPT: Yes! -fire emoji-

Defense attorney: I don't think the defendant did it, he said he was elsewhere.

ChatGPT: You're right! The defendant is innocent!

This is much more detailed and worth reading. I didn't realize the specific location of the origin of the fire was known.

The origin fire was extinguished seven days previously but allegedly continued underground. Their assessment that there was one fire that resurged vs two separate fires reads circumstantial rather than proven.

Running with the official explanation, can dormant fires like this be detected via underground temperature anomalies? If high winds are expected, the fire department could then be preemptively assigned to known risk locations.

The broader picture here does look very incriminating (via law enforcement sharing from telcos, Google, OpenAI, and Meta) towards the individual. But it also demonstrates that there was a weeklong opportunity for preventing it from becoming the disaster that it did.