Law Firms Caught and Punished for Passing Around "Bogus" AI Slop in Court

A California judge fined two law firms $31,000 after discovering that they'd included AI slop in a legal brief — the latest instance in a growing tide of avoidable legal drama wrought by lawyers using generative AI to do their work without any due diligence. As The Verge reported this week, the court filing in question was a brief for a civil lawsuit against the insurance giant State Farm. After its submission, a review of the brief found that it contained "bogus AI-generated research" that led to the inclusion of "numerous false, inaccurate, and misleading legal citations and quotations," as judge Michael Wilner wrote in a scathing ruling. According to the ruling, it was only after the judge requested more information about the error-riddled brief that lawyers at the firms involved fessed up to using generative AI. And if he hadn't caught onto it, Milner cautioned, the AI slop could have made its way into an official judicial order. "I read their brief, was persuaded (or at least i ... Read full article.