Users of the conversational AI platform ChatGPT discovered an interesting phenomenon over the weekend: the popular chatbot refuses to answer questions if

Of course the big question is who is David Mayer and why does the utterance of his name break ChatGPT? Numerous theories have already cropped up. As the online world quickly figured out, googling "David Mayer" results in David Mayer de Rothschild, heir to the famed Rothschild banking family, who is an adventurer and environmentalist.

In the case of Brian Hood, the Mayor of Hepburn Shire Council in Victoria, Australia, Hood previously made headlines for suing OpenAI over ChatGPT results that suggested that he was involved in bribery in Southeast Asia, despite being the whistleblower who had previously alerted the media and authorities to the wrongdoing.