Trump's former lawyer cited fake court cases generated by artificial intelligence

Maansi Srivastava/The New York Times

Michael Cohen, an ex-lawyer for 45 US President Donald Trump, has admitted that he mistakenly included references to non-existent AI-generated court cases in a legal document.

Here's What We Know

Cohen's motion to reduce his probation included three fictitious precedents he received from the Google Bard chatbot. A US district judge asked Cohen's attorney David Schwartz to explain the origin of the quotes.

In a written statement, Cohen admitted that he mistook Google Bard for a "super-powered search engine" without knowing that the service generates text. He sent the cases he found to Schwartz, not assuming the latter would add them to the document without checking. Schwartz now faces sanctions.

This is not the first such incident involving the use of AI in court proceedings. Previously, two New York lawyers were fined $5,000 because of it, and other lawyers are using chatbots to draft arguments.

This case demonstrates the risks of using new technologies like ChatGPT in the practice of law without properly verifying the results, experts say.

Source: The New York Times