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U.S. personal injury law firm Morgan & Morgan sent an urgent email this month to its more than 1,000 lawyers: Artificial intelligence can invent fake case law, and using made-up information in a court filing could get you fired. A federal judge in Wyoming had just threatened to sanction two lawyers at the firm who included fictitious case citations in a lawsuit against Walmart. One of the lawyers admitted in court filings last week that he used an AI program that “hallucinated” the cases and apologized for what he called an inadvertent mistake. AI’s penchant for generating legal fiction in case filings has led courts around the country to question or discipline lawyers in at least seven cases over the past two years, and created a new high-tech headache for litigants and judges, Reuters found. The Walmart case stands out because it involves a well-known law firm and a big corporate defendant. But examples like it have cropped up in all kinds of lawsuits since chatbots like ChatGPT ushered in the AI era, highlighting a new litigation risk. A Morgan & Morgan spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. Walmart declined to comment. The judge has not yet ruled whether to discipline the lawyers in the Walmart case, which involved an allegedly defective hoverboard toy. Advances in generative AI are helping reduce the time lawyers need to research and draft legal briefs, leading many law firms to contract with AI vendors or build their own AI tools. Sixty-three percent of lawyers surveyed by Reuters’ parent company Thomson Reuters last year said they have used AI for work, and 12% said they use it regularly. Generative AI, however, is known to confidently make up facts, and lawyers who use it must take caution, legal experts said. AI sometimes produces false information, known as “hallucinations” in the industry, because the models generate responses based on statistical patterns learned from large datasets rather than by verifying facts in those datasets. Attorney ethics rules require lawyers to vet and stand by their court filings or risk being disciplined. The American Bar Association told its 400,000 members last year that those obligations extend to “even an unintentional misstatement” produced through AI. The consequences have not changed just because legal research tools have evolved, said Andrew Perlman, dean of Suffolk University’s law school and an advocate of using AI to enhance legal work. “When lawyers are caught using ChatGPT or any generative AI tool to create citations without checking them, that’s incompetence, just pure and simple,” Perlman said. ‘Lack of AI literacy’ In one of the earliest court rebukes over attorneys’ use of AI, a federal judge in Manhattan in June 2023 fined two New York lawyers $5,000 for citing cases that were invented by AI in a personal injury case against an airline. A different New York federal judge last year considered imposing sanctions in a case involving Michael Cohen, the former lawyer and fixer for Donald Trump, who said he mistakenly gave his own attorney fake case citations that the attorney submitted in Cohen’s criminal tax and campaign finance case. Cohen, who used Google’s AI chatbot Bard, and his lawyer were not sanctioned, but the judge called the episode “embarrassing.” In November, a Texas federal judge ordered a lawyer who cited nonexistent cases and quotations in a wrongful termination lawsuit to pay a $2,000 penalty and attend a course about generative AI in the legal field. A federal judge in Minnesota last month said a misinformation expert had destroyed his credibility with the court after he admitted to unintentionally citing fake, AI-generated citations in a case involving a “deepfake” parody of Vice President Kamala Harris. Harry Surden, a law professor at the University of Colorado’s law school who studies AI and the law, said he recommends lawyers spend time learning “the strengths and weaknesses of the tools.” He said the mounting examples show a “lack of AI literacy” in the profession, but the technology itself is not the problem. “Lawyers have always made mistakes in their filings before AI,” he said. “This is not new.” Sara Merken, Reuters
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E-Commerce
Since the moment the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was first proposed, Elon Musks critics have warned that the worlds richest man was at risk of making decisions that could be a conflict of interest, given his multiple business operations. With recent cuts at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), those fears are increasing. Roughly 20 employees of the FDAs office of neurological and physical medicine devices were let go over the weekend, part of a larger series of cuts. Among those were workers overseeing the review of Musks Neuralink brain implant company (as well as its competitors). Reuters, which first reported the layoffs, says its sources do not believe the employees were specifically targeted due to their work on Neuralink. The FDA and Neuralink did not reply to a request from Fast Company for comment about the layoffs. The layoffs at the FDA were overseen by DOGE, Reuters reports. Reviewers who were terminated received letters saying they were being let go for performance reasons, though many had just received high rankings in the past several weeks. Supervisors of the cut employees were reportedly not consulted before the layoffs and found out about them when their direct reports contacted them. Musk announced the first brain implant, which enables paralyzed people to access digital devices via thought, in a human subject about a year ago. Earlier this month, he said the company has upgraded the devices with more electrodes, higher bandwidth, and longer battery life. Additionally, Neuralink is working on a separate implant, which it hopes will restore vision for sight-impaired people. To date, Neuralink has announced three patients who have received the brain implant and said the company hopes to implant the devices in as many as 30 more people this year. The loss of review workers could slow that larger rollout, however. (Neuralink also did not comment on whether the staff reductions at the FDA office would impact its timeline.) Industry watchdogs warn that the cuts to the FDA staff could lessen oversight of such devices, which could potentially put patients at risk. Thats particularly worrisome given the early controversy with Neuralink implants, where monkeys used in trials have reportedly died grisly deaths. Neuralink has a well-documented history of conducting unnecessary, sloppy experiments in monkeys, pigs, sheep, and other animals that raise serious concerns about the safety of its device, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine told Fast Company. A significant number of medical devices approved for clinical trials fail to ever make it to the market. As such, the public should continue to be skeptical of the safety and functionality of any device produced by Neuralink. The group instead suggested Musk explore noninvasive methods. Musk denied that any monkeys died due the implants, saying instead that they were terminally ill.” That prompted lawmakers to ask the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to investigate whether those statements constituted securities fraud by misleading investors about the safety of the implants. The SEC has not brought any charges against Musk for the statement but did send him a letter last December saying the Commission had reopened an investigation into the company. With the resignation of former SEC head Gary Gensler and Trump assuming office, its unclear if the investigation will yield any penalties for Musk, if it’s even still open. This is not the first time DOGE actions have an impact that some might consider a potential conflict of interest (although the White House, on Tuesday, claimed Musk is not the administrator for DOGE, contradicting public evidence to the contrary). On Monday, Musk said SpaceX would review the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)s systems following job cuts at the FAA. And on February 7, Musk celebrated the all-but-complete shutdown of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, posting, CFPB RIP on X. That came as X is working to roll out a financial services unit that would have been regulated by the CFPB under expanded oversight powers over mobile payment apps, which were finalized last year. The Trump administration has since agreed to pause layoffs and funding cuts at the CFPB, following a federal judges order last Friday.
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E-Commerce
A painting by street artist Banksy with an environmental message and an estimate of up to 5 million pounds ($6.3 million) is going up for auction, with some of the proceeds helping victims of the Los Angeles wildfires. Sothebys auction house said Tuesday that Crude Oil (Vettriano) is being sold in London next month from the collection of Mark Hoppus, bassist with California skate-punk band Blink-182, who sees Banksy as a kindred spirit. Hoppus said he was drawn to the subversion, humor and intelligence of Banksys work and the similarities between skateboarding, punk rock and art. I feel like street art and punk rock have the same core, Hoppus said. The left-out and overlooked making their own reality. Just go make art. Its the same spirit. And Ive loved art and especially street art ever since realizing that. Crude Oil (Vettriano) is part of a 2005 series of works in which Banksy put a satirical spin on famous paintings withering Vincent van Goghs Sunflowers and smashing the diner window in Edward Hoppers Nighthawks. The artist said his aim was to show that the real damage done to our environment is not done by graffiti writers and drunken teenagers, but by big business. The work going under the hammer is based on The Singing Butler, a painting by Scottish artist Jack Vettriano showing a couple in evening dress dancing on a beach as servants proffer sheltering umbrellas. Banksy has added a sinking oil liner and two figures lugging a barrel of toxic waste. We loved this painting since the moment we saw it, said Hoppus, who bought the artwork with his wife, Skye Everly, in 2011. He said the painting unmistakably Banksy, but different has hung in the familys homes in London and Los Angeles. Hoppus said he would use the proceeds of the sale to buy work by upcoming artists. Some will go to the California Fire Foundation, Childrens Hospital Los Angeles and Cedars Sinai Hematology Oncology Research. Banksy, who has never confirmed his full identity, began his career spray-painting buildings in Bristol, England, and has become one of the worlds best-known artists. His mischievous and often satirical images include two male police officers kissing, armed riot police with yellow smiley faces and a chimpanzee with a sign bearing the words, Laugh now, but one day Ill be in charge. Several of his works have sold for multiple millions at auction. The record is almost 18.6 million pounds ($25.4 million at the time) paid at Sothebys in October 2021 for Love is in the Bin an image of a girl with a balloon that partially self-destructed during an auction three years earlier thanks to a shredder hidden in the frame. Crude Oil (Vettriano) is on display at Sothebys in New York until Thursday and in London Feb. 26-March 4. Jill Lawless, Associated Press
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