A Penn State student was charged last week with impersonating a public servant for allegedly pretending to be a university police officer in messages he composed using an artificial intelligence chatbot and sent to a woman.
Isaiah H. Goldman, 21, sent the messages to a woman he knew on Feb. 26, starting them with “Urgent Notice from Penn State Police,” according to an affidavit of probable cause filed on Thursday. Goldman allegedly asked the woman “investigatory questions,” telling her that she was the subject of a drug-related investigation and that police had received multiple reports of her possessing illegal substances and smoking marijuana in her dorm room.
Goldman wrote that “we strongly encourage you to cooperate,” and that failure to do so would lead to university sanctions and “delays in your future graduation,” according to the affidavit. He also told her that if she did not answer questions about obtaining and smoking marijuana she would face additional charges, police wrote.
The woman told police that the messages came from an 814 area code number she did not recognize, and because she was involved in a recent marijuana possession investigation she believed the messages were from a real police officer.
Goldman was arrested on Feb. 28 for misdemeanor charges of stalking and harassment, and at the time he consented to a search of his phone, according to the affidavit.
A forensic examination of his phone found Goldman had used Chat GPT to compose the messages that he sent to the woman, police wrote. He had screenshots of the inputs he submitted to Chat GPT, the responses that were created and his conversation with the woman, for which he used a phone number created by an app, according to the affidavit.
He was charged via summons on Thursday with one misdemeanor count of impersonating a public servant. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for May 21.
Goldman waived a preliminary hearing in March on the stalking and harassment charges.
