New Mexico lawyer fined for using AI-generated brief containing fabricated testimony
TL;DR
Stephen Aarons said he tried to use ChatGPT to create a ‘bulletproof summary’ during a murder conviction appeal A defense lawyer appealing his client’s murder conviction submitted a legal brief containing made-up police testimony and witnesses fabricated by OpenAI’s ChatGPT, New Mexico’s highest court said. The New Mexico supreme court on Wednesday fined the attorney, Stephen Aarons, and held him in contempt for failing to verify the accuracy of the court filing, which Aarons said he prepared with help from the artificial intelligence (AI) application.
Nauti's Take
Anyone using AI in legal or other evidence-critical workflows needs a hard chain of provenance: every factual claim must lead back to an original document and pass human review. For a small team, the first test should be a controlled process with source fields, independent checking, and explicit approval before AI-generated text enters an official filing or decision.
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