This week’s kitchen sink for April 17, 2026 (with meme from Gates Dogfish) discusses Jesus AI chatbots, AI taking our jobs & more!
Why “the kitchen sink”? Find out here! 🙂
The Kitchen Sink is even better when you can include a brand-new eDiscovery meme courtesy of Gates Dogfish, the meme channel dedicated to eDiscovery people and created by Aaron Patton. For more great eDiscovery memes, follow Gates Dogfish on LinkedIn here! “Shut up and take my money!” 🤣
Here is the kitchen sink for April 17 of ten-ish stories that I didn’t get to this week, with a comment from me about each:
We’re up to 1,324 AI hallucination cases and counting. But 785 of them are by pro se litigants. 😁
Note: Rob Robinson has launched his 1H 2026 eDiscovery Business Confidence Survey, with more AI and business-related questions! Consider taking the survey here – it’s a terrific barometer on eDiscovery business trends!
We Wanted Smarter Legal Tech, but Instead Got an Expensive Dependency: Speaking of Rob, he discusses how despite massive investment in AI-driven legal technology, the legal industry is seeing far less real value than promised – so far. This article is a “stats-fest”, with stats from Forrester, PwC, Thomson Reuters and Georgetown Law, Clio, Axiom and Everlaw. 😁
Religion Has Gone AI: This week’s sign of the apocalypse. Users can join video calls with avatars of Hindu gurus and Buddhist priests to AI Jesuses. There’s even OpenAI’s ChatGPT for Catholics! Holy crap! 😉 Next thing you know, world leaders will be creating images of themselves as Jesus healing Jon Stewart! Nah, that’ll never happen… 🤣
Lawyers Aren’t Losing Their Jobs to AI, They’re Losing Their Tasks: Exactly what I’ve been saying. AI doesn’t take jobs, it takes tasks. The more lawyers embrace AI for the lower-value repeatable tasks, the more than can focus on providing higher-value advisory tasks to their clients. AI still can’t do that.
AI Agent Opens Store, Forgets to Schedule Staff: Andon Market, a San Francisco gift shop, is being run by an AI agent named Luna, and is the first AI-run store in the Bay Area. The bot decides what to sell, negotiates with suppliers, orders inventory, and even haggles with customers (via an old-school phone in the store). But it still needs human help to run the store, and the bot hired two staffers but neglected to schedule either for opening day. Luna(cy)! 😉
Will AI Take My Job? OpenAI’s New Policy, Rising Cybersecurity Risks, and What Comes Next: Or maybe the AI agent was trying to accelerate the inevitable? Ralph Losey discusses the growing anxiety about AI’s impact on jobs and how several factors – including OpenAI’s 2026 Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age and cybersecurity risks – may play a role.
Connecticut court proposes a rule: ”Lawyers must verify all AI citations”: Angela Delvecchio of Project Counsel Media discusses how Connecticut’s Rules Committee of the Superior Court proposed a rule requiring lawyers and pro se parties to “independently verify all citations, legal authorities or evidence produced by generative A.I.” amid a slate of practice book revisions. Any erroneous citations or “hallucinations” created by AI could give rise to sanctions that include, but are not limited to, default judgment or the entry of a nonsuit, under the proposed rule. We’ve already seen that happen in cases before – hasn’t slowed down the onslaught of cases so far. No reason to believe this will make a significant difference.
Snap, Facing ‘Crucible Moment,’ Cuts 16% of Staff: Of course, AI is cited as the driving force. Is it me or are we seeing more “AI will – or already is – taking jobs” stories than ever? Ruh-roh.
OpenAI Investors Criticise ‘Unfocused’ Strategy: OpenAI has an $852 billion valuation. Imagine what they could do if they were focused? 😉
The EU’s E-Evidence Framework Goes Live in August and Most of Europe Isn’t Ready: Rob Robinson discusses how Regulation (EU) 2023/1543, the centerpiece of the EU’s E-Evidence Framework, is taking effect on August 18, 2026, representing a major shift in how law enforcement accesses digital evidence across borders. But many European countries are unprepared for its rollout – only four EU member states formally bound by the package had adopted implementing legislation by the deadline of February 18.
Claude is requiring some of its users to verify their identity. Here’s Anthropic’s explanation.: Anthropic introduced identity verification for “a few use cases,” requiring some Claude users to upload government IDs. Persona Identities will manage and secure the ID data for the Claude users prompted to verify their identity. People are going crazy about this, but other sites (such as LinkedIn) already do it for selected users. It’s only a matter of time before the other AI companies follow suit, IMO.
It is Improper and a “Perilous Shortcut” to “Outsource” Discovery Positions to A.I.: Your Michael Berman fix for the week. Here, he discusses a case where “Plaintiff’s counsel admitted that he simply uploaded Defendant’s discovery responses into an AI program, asked AI to identify insufficient responses, and copied and pasted the results to an email that he sent to Defendant’s counsel and to the Court.” C’mon man! 😠
Hope you enjoyed the kitchen sink for April 17, 2026! Back next week with another edition!
So, what do you think? Which story is your favorite one? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.
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