Well, that might be a new one! In this case, there were multiple fabricated quotations not about case law, but from depositions in the actual case.
In the case of Pauliah v. Univ. of Mississippi Med Center, et al., Mississippi District Judge Carlton W. Reeves noted this: “Courts across the country have dealt with the rising misuse of generative artificial intelligence to prepare court filings. Those cases have largely, if not entirely, dealt with citations to non-existent legal authority or the attribution of quotes to cases that do not contain the quoted material—produced as a result of what has come to be termed ‘AI hallucinations.’ This case is different, as it appears that AI was used not to hallucinate the law, but to hallucinate the facts.”
And by “facts”, he meant the deposition transcripts, as follows: “The declaration at issue contained multiple fabricated quotations, presented to the Court along with manufactured citations to deposition transcripts, as if they came from sworn testimony. The declaration also grossly mischaracterized testimony and other facts in the record…This declaration was filed in opposition to a motion for summary judgment. Counsel expressly used some of these fabricated ‘facts’ to argue to the Court that this case contained genuine issues in factual dispute. Manufacturing ‘facts,’ then presenting them to the Court as genuine, threatens to corrupt the Court’s analysis and undermine the integrity of the judicial process at the summary judgment stage.”
So, who’s at fault? As Judge Reeves noted: “Plaintiff and his counsel were again afforded an opportunity to take responsibility for filing falsehoods with the Court. During the 56(h) hearing, Dr. Pauliah and his former counsel, Mr. Begley, disagreed over who drafted which portions of the bad faith declaration. Largely, they blamed each other. Mr. Begley claimed he drafted about half and Dr. Pauliah drafted about half. By contrast, Dr. Pauliah claimed he drafted merely two to three paragraphs in the more than 40-page, single-spaced declaration. Dr. Pauliah’s assertion is preposterous. Regardless, neither is blameless. Mr. Begley acknowledged at the hearing that he had a responsibility to review whatever Dr. Pauliah prepared, and Dr. Pauliah admitted, after some questioning, that he used generative AI to draft at least a portion of his declaration. He also admitted he did not review his declaration prior to signing it.”
In other words, he used GenAI to summarize the depositions and included the results in the declaration without verifying whether they were accurate, leading to “multiple fabricated quotations”.
Oops.
Calling the actions of both the plaintiff and his former counsel “unacceptable”, Judge Reeves sanctioned counsel to pay opposing counsel $4,000 and attend a minimum 3-hour CLE course “on the topic of hallucinatory citations generated by AI in the legal field”. He also ordered the plaintiff to pay opposing counsel $1,000.
Document summarization is a terrific capability, but AI hallucinations happen there too – sometimes frequently. It’s important to check the output to ensure that the document says what the AI says it says. Failing to do so can be costly.
So, what do you think? Are you concerned about the accuracy of AI document summarization? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.
Hat tip to Maura R. Grossman for the heads up on this case, which isn’t even in the AI hallucinations database yet (as of this writing, at least).
Image created using GPT-4o’s Image Creator Powered by DALL-E, using the term “robot judge doing a faceplant when looking at a computer”.
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