A lawyer in New York has been summoned to a court hearing as he admitted to using ChatGPT for legal research in a case that he and his firm were involved in.
One of the judges said that the court was faced with an "unprecedented circumstance" as it found that the pleading referred to precedent from cases that did not exist.
The lawyer who used the tool told the court that he did not know that its content could be false and apologised for relying on the chatbot without his own control.
The case involved a man who took legal action against an airline for allegedly injuring himself.
His legal team submitted the relevant memorandum referring to various previous court cases in an attempt to show, using precedent, why the case should proceed.
However, the airline's lawyers informed the judge that they could not find several of the cases mentioned in the memorandum.
"Six of the submitted rulings appear to be false, with false citations and internal citations," the judge noted in an order asking the lawyer's legal team to provide an explanation.
The testimony in this regard revealed that the investigation was not ultimately prepared by the plaintiff's lawyer, but by a colleague at the same law firm.
Steven Schwartz, who has been a lawyer for more than 30 years, admitted that he used ChatGPT to search for similar previous cases.
In a written statement, he clarified that the plaintiff's lawyer was not involved in the investigation and did not know how it was conducted.
He vowed never to use artificial intelligence to supplement his legal research in the future without full verification of its authenticity.
English 
Ελληνικά 
Deutsch 
Italiano 