Recently, a ridiculous farce was staged in the federal court in Mississippi, USA, which made the judge furious.This was originally an ordinary service fee contract dispute case. However, the four attorneys representing both the plaintiff and the defendant relied on artificial intelligence to write legal documents, and the documents were filled with false precedents fabricated by AI.
During the trial, the judge discovered anomalies when checking the precedents cited in the document. Many cases were not recorded in the formal legal database.
After in-depth investigation, the truth emerged:Lawyers on both sides use AI tools to complete document writing. These non-existent precedents are all caused by typical AI "illusions".
At the hearing, four lawyers admitted violations. One of the lawyers directly used AI to generate complete documents without any verification, and defended herself on the grounds that she did not understand AI illusions. She had been warned for similar issues before, but still went her own way. The AI tools used by the lawyers were not suitable for local laws. The other two lawyers directly signed the AI documents handed over by their colleagues and submitted them to the court without reviewing them.
In the end, the court imposed severe penalties.All four lawyers were disqualified from representing the case. Two lawyers who directly used AI to write documents were banned from appearing in the court for two years and were fined heavily. The remaining two were also fined, and relevant violations were reported to local bar associations..
In fact, it is not new for lawyers to abuse AI to fabricate precedents. Since the first typical case was exposed in New York in 2023, similar incidents have increased year by year. As of April this year, there have been more than 1,100 related records around the world, and the penalties imposed by courts around the world have also been escalating.
