Lawyers and their firm were fined $5,000 for using false citations from ChatGPT.

A judge has recently fined two lawyers, Steven Schwartz and Peter LoDuca, and the law firm they work for, Levidow, Levidow, and Oberman, $5,000 for submitting fake case citations generated by the AI platform ChatGPT. According to The Guardian, Judge P. Kevin Castel issued the fines after Schwartz admitted that he had used the platform to cite six cases in a legal brief in a lawsuit against Colombian-based airline Avianca.

In his written opinion, Castel noted that there was nothing wrong with the attorneys using an AI tool for assistance, but that they should have taken responsibility for ensuring that the filings were accurate. He said, “Technological advances are commonplace and there is nothing inherently improper about using a reliable artificial intelligence tool for assistance. But existing rules impose a gatekeeping role on attorneys to ensure the accuracy of their filings.”

The law firm Levidow, Levidow, and Oberman later stated that their attorneys “respectfully disagreed” with the judge’s determination that they had acted in bad faith.

Artificial intelligence might be the next technological wave, but chatbots like ChatGPT, which was developed by OpenAI, are prone to inaccuracies. In April, for instance, ChatGPT falsely accused George Washington University Professor Jonathan Turley of sexually harassing a student. Turley told The New York Post that the platform had “invented an allegation where I was on the faculty at a school where I have never taught, went on a trip that I never took, and reported an allegation that was never made.”

The situation came to light when UCLA Professor Eugene Volokh asked the platform to cite “five examples of sexual harassment at American law schools, along with quotes from relevant newspaper articles.” One of the examples ChatGPT cited was an alleged 2018 incident where “Georgetown University Law Center” professor Turley was accused of sexual harassment by a former female student. The platform quoted a fake Washington Post article that said, “The complaint alleges that Turley made ‘sexually suggestive comments’ and ‘attempted to touch her sexually’ during a law school-sponsored trip to Alaska.”

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