BAKU, Azerbaijan, September 11. The New Mexico Supreme Court has fined a defense lawyer $5,000 and held him in contempt after finding that a murder appeal brief he submitted contained fabricated police testimony and witnesses generated by OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
The court said lawyer Stephen Aarons failed to verify the accuracy of material included in the filing, which contained “false testimony from wholly fabricated witnesses.”
The justices also said Aarons had demonstrated a lack of remorse and insufficient concern for his client. They ordered that the matter be referred to an attorney disciplinary board for further investigation.
Aarons told Reuters that he used ChatGPT to summarize trial proceedings after agreeing to represent the defendant in the appeal last year. He said he did not understand the extent to which artificial intelligence systems could “hallucinate” or generate false information.
The lawyer said he was remorseful and hoped the disciplinary board would consider the incident an honest mistake.
The case highlights the risks of using generative artificial intelligence in legal proceedings without independently verifying AI-generated information against original court records and other authoritative sources.
