Lawyers who submitted bogus case law created by ChatGPT fined US$5,000

NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge on Thursday imposed US$5,000 fines on two lawyers and a law firm in an unprecedented instance in which ChatGPT was blamed for their submission of fictitious legal research in an aviation injury claim.

Judge P. Kevin Castel said they acted in bad faith. But he credited their apologies and remedial steps taken in explaining why harsher sanctions were not necessary to ensure they or others won't again let artificial intelligence tools prompt them to produce fake legal history in their arguments.

“Technological advances are commonplace and there is nothing inherently improper about using a reliable artificial intelligence tool for assistance,” Castel wrote.

“But existing rules impose a gatekeeping role on attorneys to ensure the accuracy of their filings.”

The judge said the lawyers and their firm, Levidow, Levidow & Oberman, P.C., “abandoned their responsibilities when they submitted non-existent judicial opinions with fake quotes and citations created by the artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT, then continued to stand by the fake opinions after judicial orders called their existence into question.”

In a statement, the law firm said it would comply with Castel's order, but added: “We respectfully disagree with the finding that anyone at our firm acted in bad faith. We have already apologised to the Court and our client. We continue to believe that in the face of what even the Court acknowledged was an unprecedented situation, we made a good faith mistake in failing to believe that a piece of technology could be making up cases out of whole cloth.”

The firm said it was considering whether to appeal.

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