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Michael Cohen cites AI-generated court cases in his defense (www.theverge.com)

submitted 11 months ago by Carighan@lemmy.world to c/nottheonion@lemmy.world

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Michael Cohen, the former lawyer for Donald Trump, admitted to citing fake, AI-generated court cases in a legal document that wound up in front of a federal judge, as reported earlier by The New York Times. A filing unsealed on Friday says Cohen used Google’s Bard to perform research after mistaking it for “a super-charged search engine” rather than an AI chatbot.

I... don't even. I lack the words.

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[–] CommanderCloon@lemmy.ml 70 points 11 months ago (2 children)

That's the second time a lawyer has made this mistake, though the previous case wasn't at such a high level

[–] huginn@feddit.it 57 points 11 months ago

Not even close to the second time. It's happening constantly but is getting missed.

Too many people think LLMs are accurate.

[–] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 43 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I work for a law firm, and yeah, this happens a lot. The stupidity and laziness of our clients' in-house attorneys is making us a lot of money.

[–] littlebluespark@lemmy.world 19 points 11 months ago (1 children)

So, AI is... checks notes... making you a lot of money, by association?

[–] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I do get profit sharing. :)

[–] KGB@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

Hi there, Mr Specter.

[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Why is there not an automated check for any cases referenced in a filing, or required links? It would be trivial to require a clear format or uniform cross-reference, and this looks like an easy niche for automation to improve the judicial system. I understand that you couldn’t interpret those cases or the relevance, but an existence check and links or it doesn’t count.

I assume that now it doesn’t happen unless the other side sys a paralegal for a few hours of research

[–] ridethisbike@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago

I think the issue is we're still in pretty uncharted territory here. It'll take time for stuff like that to become the norm. That said... The lawyers should be doing those kind of checks anyways. They're idiots if they don't.