A man who has been arrested on suspicion of starting the deadly Palisades Fire that destroyed thousands of homes and killed a dozen people in Los Angeles last year allegedly used ChatGPT to generate images of burning forests and cities, according to law enforcement officials.
The suspect in custody, 29-year-old Jonathan Rinderknecht, was arrested near his home in Florida on Tuesday for destruction of property by means of fire, acting US Attorney Bill Essayli told reporters at a press conference on Wednesday.
Federal prosecutors allege that Rinderknecht started an initial eight acre blaze, called the Lachman fire, in the early hours of New Year’s Day. Firefighters initially put out the fire, but it rekindled days later, which prosecutors say eventually grew into the even larger inferno that devoured the Pacific Palisades hillside, causing numerous deaths and hundreds of billions of dollars in damages.
That night before the New Year, Rinderknecht had been working as an Uber driver, prosecutors say in a complaint. Two of his passengers told investigators that he seemed angry and agitated. After dropping off his last customer in the Palisades, Rinderknecht drove to the Skull Rock trailhead, and then walked to a clearing on the hilltop that a friend said he frequently visited. Cell data confirmed his location, the complaint said. While there, he took videos with his iPhone and listened to a French rap song called “Un Zder, Un The,” per the LA Times.
Soon, Rinderknecht turned to an AI chatbot for advice. Shortly after starting the fire after midnight, prosecutors allege, he tried calling 911 several times because of bad reception to report the fire. When he finally got through to an operator, he typed a question into ChatGPT, OpenAI’s chatbot.
“Are you at fault if a fire is [lit] because of your cigarettes,” Rinderknecht allegedly asked the AI model, per an affidavit quoted by the Los Angeles Times.
ChatGPT’s response: “Yes.”
After running from the fire, Rinderknecht claimed he returned to offer firefighters help with the blaze. But investigators argue that he had an ulterior motive. They allegedly found videos on his phone he had taken of firefighters trying to put out the fire, and a screen recording of his phone as he tried to call 911.
The videos and his ChatGPT question suggest “he wanted to create evidence regarding a more innocent explanation for the cause of the fire,” the complaint said, per the BBC.
The investigation also dug into Rinderknecht’s past interactions with ChatGPT. In July 2024, he asked the chatbot to generate an image of a “dystopian painting” that showed a crowd of people running away from a burning forest and trying “to get past a gigantic gate with a big dollar sign on it.”
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