Texas judge bans legal filings that rely on AI-generated content

A Texas federal judge has banned legal filings that are drafted primarily by artificial intelligence (AI) in his court without a person first checking those documents for accuracy. 

U.S. District Judge Brantley Starr ordered that attorneys file a certificate before appearing before the court that either AI platforms did not contribute to any part of a filing or that someone checked any language that it drafted for accuracy using print reporters or traditional legal databases. 

“These platforms are incredibly powerful and have many uses in the law: form divorces, discovery requests, suggested errors in documents, anticipated questions at oral argument,” a post on Starr’s page on the Northern District of Texas court website states. “But legal briefing is not one of them.”

Starr argued that the AI platforms like ChatGPT and Google’s Bard are “prone to hallucinations and bias.” He said they can make up content like quotes or citations and can only follow the code that they are programmed with instead of upholding the law and ethics. 

“As such, these systems hold no allegiance to any client, the rule of law, or the laws and Constitution of the United States (or, as addressed above, the truth),” he said in the post. “Unbound by any sense of duty, honor, or justice, such programs act according to computer code rather than conviction, based on programming rather than principle.” 

Any filing from a party that does not submit the certification will be stricken. 

CBS News reported that the order came after a lawyer used ChatGPT to produce a filing in a lawsuit, but the platform made up court cases that did not exist and referenced them in its argument. 

AI platforms have become increasingly popular in recent months with several Big Tech companies vowing to develop their own versions. But some detractors have warned that advancements in AI technology could come at significant cost — such as increasing the spread of propaganda and replacing manual jobs with automated ones. 

A group of AI experts and industry leaders warned in an open letter earlier this week that mitigating the risk of “extinction” from AI should be as much a global priority as preventing pandemics and nuclear war. 

Major technology experts — including Twitter CEO Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak — also called for at least a six-month pause on the development of AI technology in March until society can be sure that it can manage the risks.