Pro Tip: Don’t Send Your AI Avatar to Testify for You in Court

Generally speaking, it is not considered a good idea to represent yourself in court. But there is another, potentially worse route: you can say that you are going to represent yourself, then pass the task on to an AI avatar in order to show off the capabilities of your startup. That appears to be the approach that AI entrepreneur Jerome Dewald took, according to a report from The Register, and it was not well received by the court. Here’s the situation that Dewald seemingly found himself in: Dewald is the plaintiff in an employment dispute with insurance firm MassMutual Metro New York and was scheduled to make an argument before the court on March 26, 2025. Dewald was diagnosed with throat cancer 25 years ago and, according to his account to The Register, still suffers from the effects of it, making continuous speaking challenging. So he asked the court if he could submit a video to make his statement—a reasonable enough request that the court seemed to have approved in advance. What ... Read full article.