Why would the chatbot be liable instead of the person who instigated that process?

International law says you spank whoever launched it. There’s treaties on this.

Barring that, we have anti-satellite missiles.

A person who wrote the prompt, the person who spawned the instance, the person who provided the access to infra, the person who launched it.

At the end of the day, there is somebody who profits from it or could have prevented it