A Lawyer Used ChatGPT To Write A Case Filing And Ended Up Citing Several Cases That Don't Exist

From the studio that brought you "College Students Having Robots Write Their Papers" comes this summer's hottest new AI fuck-up, "Citing Case Law That Doesn't Exist As A Licensed Attorney."

CBS News — A lawyer who relied on ChatGPT to prepare a court filing on behalf of a man suing an airline is now all too familiar with the artificial intelligence tool's shortcomings — including its propensity to invent facts. 

Roberto Mata sued Colombian airline Avianca last year, alleging that a metal food and beverage cart injured his knee on a flight to Kennedy International Airport in New York. When Avianca asked a Manhattan judge to dismiss the lawsuit based on the statute of limitations, Mata's lawyer, Steven A. Schwartz, submitted a brief based on research done by ChatGPT, Schwartz, of the law firm Levidow, Levidow & Oberman, said in an affidavit. 

While ChatGPT can be useful to professionals in numerous industries, including the legal profession, it has proved itself to be both limited and unreliable. In this case, the AI invented court cases that didn't exist, and asserted that they were real.

The fabrications were revealed when Avianca's lawyers approached the case's judge, Kevin Castel of the Southern District of New York, saying they couldn't locate the cases cited in Mata's lawyers' brief in legal databases.

The made-up decisions included cases titled Martinez v. Delta Air Lines, Zicherman v. Korean Air Lines and Varghese v. China Southern Airlines.

I don't love saying anyone else should lose their job — with the exceptions of Butch Jones and Jeremy Pruitt — but this guy simply can't work another day as a lawyer. It seems like Steven Schwartz isn't involved in criminal law, but can you imagine showing up to your trial for a murder you didn't commit and your defense attorney gets up in front of a jury and starts citing cases that don't exist and were made up by a robot? Roberto Mata should be thanking his lucky stars all he hired this guy to do was sue an airline.

Once again, though, can we just cool it with all this AI shit? It's making the world significantly worse — and that's notwithstanding the possibility it takes over and kills everyone.

Make Intelligence Real Again, that's what I've always said.