Lawyers submitted bogus case law created by ChatGPT. A judge fined them $5,000
apnews.com
A federal judge has imposed $5,000 fines on a group of lawyers after ChatGPT was blamed for their submission of fictitious legal research to support an aviation injury claim. Judge P. Kevin Castel said the lawyers acted in bad faith but credited their apologies in a written ruling Thursday. The lawyers testified earlier this month that they thought references to past cases in a document they submitted to Castel were real. They actually were made up by the artificial intelligence-powered chatbot. Separately, the judge tossed out the aviation claim, saying the statute of limitations had expired.
  • @gamermanhEnglish
    27•1 year ago

    Absolutely too small of a punishment

    These guys did 0 work in fact checking a system that is known to hallucinate

    • phosphorik
      14•1 year ago

      Seriously. Only 5k? After doubling down on the lie? They should never work in law again.

    • onepinksheep
      5•1 year ago

      If it was intentional and they knew it was bogus, sure. But without looking at the details, I’m guessing they asked ChatGPT for case references and didn’t fact check their results. Negligent, yes, but apparently not to the level to require disbarment.

      • @[email protected]
        3•1 year ago

        See the video linked above.

        The initial use of ChatGPT was negligent, but they subsequently attempted to cover up what they did and lied to the judge, so, pretty terrible overall

  • RiikkaTheIcePrincess
    11•1 year ago

    “Oh, we’re so sorry! We just couldn’t imagine a tool created to make shit up would actually make shit up instead of quoting verbatim ]judicial precedent/case law/whatever jargon]! Also we accidentally lied and unintentionally refused to perform our actual roles as required by, y’know, normal procedure and/or law like a real law firm with real lawyers in it. Whoopsy! Totally cool, though, right?”