A bar owner has blamed ChatGPT and TikTok after staff confiscated a fake ID that had Benjamin Franklin’s details on it, prompting them to ban young drinkers.
When you get to the legal drinking age, it’s a rite of passage that you head out to a bar and guzzle down your first legal drink. Some people, obviously, jump ahead of that using a fake ID and going for a drink while underage.
In Philadelphia, one bar has tried to combat underage drinkers by raising the age of entry to 25. The reason behind that? They confiscated a fake ID that had the details of Benjamin Franklin, yes, one of the founding fathers, on it. His address was even listed as The Liberty Bell, too.
“Thank you to whoever brought this in. We confiscated it, obviously, and that’s the day I’m like, ‘We’re done,’” Jody Sweitzer, co-owner of Dirty Frank’s, told ABC 7.
Benjamin Franklin fake ID prompts change for bar
Sweitzer pointed to ChatGPT and TikTok as two of the main reasons behind a rise in fake IDs for younger patrons, especially the more ridiculous ones, such as the former president.
“I guess it was with the ChatGPT, and TikTok and everything, so we started getting swarms of kids, 20 at a time, 30 at a time, and it was so odd,” she added. “Everybody was scanning, the UV lights were working, so all the holograms were correct, but it just seemed really off.”
The bar co-owner noted that the plan is to return to the normal policy of 21 and over, but when they have the necessary equipment.
The fake ID had Franklin’s address as The Liberty Bell.
“I will purchase it, and we’ll go back to 21 and over. Until I have a scanner that is capable of determining whether it’s a fake ID or not, that’s just how it is,” she continued.
This isn’t the first instance of AI being the reason that people land in trouble, nor is it likely to be the last. Lawyers in Kansas have been fined $12,000 after a judge declared that AI-generated documents had “hallucinated” legal arguments.
