Writing in USA Today, Professor Jonathan Turley, of George Washington University, said he was falsely accused by the chatbot of assaulting students on a trip that he “never took” while working at a school he “never taught at”.

“It is only the latest cautionary tale on how artificial ‘artificial intelligence’ can be,” Professor Turley remarked.

A lawyer had reportedly asked ChatGPT to create a list of legal academics who had been accused of sexual harassment.

It produced a list that included Mr Turley’s name and accused him of making sexualised comments towards a student and attempting to touch them during a class trip to Alaska, citing a non-existent article in The Washington Post it claimed was from 2018.

No such article exists and the claims were fabricated by the chatbot.

“What is most striking is that this false accusation was not just generated by AI but ostensibly based on a Post article that never existed,” Mr Turley tweeted.

“When first contacted, I found the accusation comical. After some reflection, it took on a more menacing meaning,” he said.

University of Southern California AI expert Kate Crawford has labelled such stories “hallucitations”.