new Mexico. During the hearing of a murder case in New Mexico, America, a lawyer presented documents prepared with the help of ChatGPT in the court, which mentioned fictitious witnesses and police statements which were not present in the actual records. After the case came to light, the Supreme Court of New Mexico convicted lawyer Stephen Aarons of contempt of court and fined him $5,000.
The documents of the case were uploaded in ChatGPT
Lawyer Stephen Aarons said that he had taken the help of ChatGPT to prepare a summary of the trial proceedings. For this, he had uploaded the case transcript and other documents in the AI tool. They believed that ChatGPT would produce reliable summaries based on the available documents.
But the summary prepared mentioned witnesses and police statements that did not actually exist. The document also included information related to the clothing of the person who fired the shot, which had no basis in actual records.
The lawyer said- I had no idea that AI could do this.
Aarons said in court that he had no idea that AI could produce false or imaginary facts to this extent. However, the court raised serious questions on this argument.
During a hearing on August 21, Justice C. Shannon Bacon asked the lawyer if he watched the news, listened to the radio or read about events happening in the world. The court expressed concern over the increasing number of cases of lawyers relying on false information generated by AI.
The court gave a clear warning
This case has once again raised the question as to how carefully AI-generated content should be used in legal matters. AI can help in summarizing a document or organizing information, but presenting the facts derived from it in court without matching it with the original record can create serious problems.
In this case too, AI generated content was used without being verified against actual records and resulted in court action against the lawyer and a fine of $5,000.