New York Lawyers Accuse ChatGPT of Tricking Them into Citing Inaccurate Legal Research

Two New York lawyers are facing possible punishment for falsely citing legal research in a court filing. Attorneys Steven A. Schwartz and Peter LoDuca apologized to the judge, blaming the artificial intelligence-powered chatbot ChatGPT for tricking them into including fictitious cases in a lawsuit against Avianca, a Colombian airline. Schwartz used ChatGPT to find legal precedents supporting his client’s case for an injury incurred on a 2019 flight, but he did not verify if the cases suggested by the chatbot were real or not. The chatbot suggested several cases involving aviation mishaps that did not exist. Microsoft has invested $1 billion in OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. While many have been fascinated by the AI program’s essay-like responses to prompts, hundreds of industry leaders signed a letter in May calling for global priority to mitigate the risks of extinction from AI. The judge will rule on sanctions at a later date.