Login | October 22, 2024
Chat GPT continues to mess up in courtrooms
RICHARD WEINER
Technology for Lawyers
Published: October 4, 2024
Really? This guy passed the bar?
Yet another ChatGPT legal hallucination disaster has happened in yet another courtroom—although this one is something less than just randomly making up cases that don’t exist.
(Thanks to the great “Above the Law” for pointing out all this juicy stuff).
In this case, the AI found good, actual cases but either didn’t find the right quote or had the wrong citation.
A lawyer asked the judge in the case not to impose sanctions because his evident/obvious misunderstanding of how crappy Chat GPT is stemmed from a “good-faith reliance” on AI.
And it’s not like lawyers don’t know how crappy Chat GPT is for the profession. It’s not like lawyers can’t read, right?
This U.S. Court for the Western District of Virginia case is Lovino v. Stapleton. We know what happened because of the attorney, Thad Guyer’s, response to a show cause filing wanting to hold the lawyer in contempt for using a Gen AI without double-checking the results.
In pleading ignorance, the attorney’s justification for giving the judge incorrect information is that Chat GPT is stupid!
He said: “The two cases cited by Defendant and the Court as apparently non-existent, United Therapeutics Corp. v. Watson Laboratories, Inc. and United States v. Mosby, do exist but were miscited….” In other words: Chat GPT is stupid but it’s not as stupid as it used to be. Or something.
The cites were not the only problem.
The AI made up quotes. Because of course it did because that’s what it does. What does Guyer say?
“The attributed quotations that do not appear verbatim in the cited cases, Graves v. Lioi and Bostock v. Clayton County, nonetheless accurately reflect principles discussed in those cases….”
Direct quotes are the same as general principles, according to this guy.
Now, cough cough, I am the author of a legal writing textbook published by our friends at West Publishing (out of print). And I’m just gonna say “no” here, and wonder what good old Judge Manos of the Northern District of Ohio would have said about that.
Get it yet?
AI may be good for some things, but not good for law.
OK bye now.