AI Hallucinations Continue, Affecting Even BigLaw
The Special Master in Lacey v. State Farm General Insurance Co. wastes no time getting straight to the point: Referencing the attorneys’ use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the form of large-language models, the court noted that the attorneys representing plaintiff submitted briefs containing “bogus AI-generated research.” The court imposed litigation sanctions against plaintiff and financial penalties against the attorneys involved. One third of the twenty-seven citations in a ten-page letter brief submitted to the Special Master were faulty in some way. Two cited cases did not exist; citations to existing cases were invented. The dread AI hallucination strikes again.
This time, the victims were not harried solo practitioners. The plaintiff was represented by a team of attorneys at two firms. One attorney generated a draft brief with the aid of AI. Other attorneys incorporated that draft brief into their submission without checking any citations. Nobody asked, and the attorney who provided the original draft did not volunteer the key detail that his draft was AI-assisted. The other attorneys behaved no better than the original malfeasor. Offered the opportunity to revise their submission, they offered up another brief that still included AI-generated errors, and they did not avail themselves of the opportunity to admit their earlier misplaced reliance on AI.
The Special Master sanctioned the attorneys by having them cover the costs of the proceedings, which came to over $26,000, plus $5000 of defense attorneys’ fees. Because the attorneys confessed their misconduct and expressed genuine remorse, the Special Master refrained from recommending any further discipline.