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.
“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?”
“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?”