American court to sanction law firm for citing AI generated fake cases | Need for regulation in law | AI can never substitute the human mind

On 6th of February, the American district court of Wyoming while hearing a consumer case against Walmart asked the counsels of the plaintiff to bring true copies of the cases cited by them or face sanctions after it was found that the citations by plaintiff’s law firm were fake and ChatGPT generated. The plaintiff was being represented by a top tier law firm Morgan & Morgan which is the biggest injury law firm of the states along with a California based Goody law Group. The counsels for plaintiff did gave a statement in their latest filing to the court stating that the cases cited by them were not legitimate and hallucinated by an internal AI tool used by the firm. This is not the first time such an incident took place in an American court. Previously in June of 2024, the court of State of Colorado had sanctioned and suspended two lawyers who cited various AI generated cases in their brief. Furthermore, many US judges have passed orders against the use of AI in briefs and citations.

Pursuant to such instances, various courts in the US have now mandated lawyers to certify that all documents such as briefs, motions, being produced before the court are free from the use of AI. Many courts across the world have also begun to sanction and condemn the use of AI in court activities such as pleadings, arguments, etc. Similarly in a recent ruling of the High court of Delhi in Christian Louboutin SAS & Anr. v. M/s The Shoe Boutique – Shutiq, made observation on the use and reliability of AI tools in legal proceedings. The court held that tools like ChatGPT cannot be used and relied upon completely in a court of law and cannot replace the humane effect needed in the courts.  The court further asserted that AI tools cannot and should not be used for anything more than understanding and research that too with thorough vetting. 

Seeing the increase in use of AI tools by Indian lawyers in drafting, pleading and citation, the Indian courts would also soon require lawyers to file certificates or declarations stating that drafting of court documents is free from the use of AI and has been manually checked to be correct and accurate. The court also must curb situations like mentioned above where cases cited are found to be “hallucinated” by AI tools. Apart from mandating certificates /declarations, the court can should also make it mandatory that every court document should go through an automatic AI detection process which will eliminate AI generate content that may appear original or true but end up misleading the court.

Furthermore, the use of AI overall must be strictly regulated before the charming world of AI becomes a bane. The European Union and China have already implemented Artificial Intelligence Specific laws to regulate the Artificial Intelligence space. Apart from that the Indian legal fraternity should also draft rules specific to them comprising of use of AI by lawyers in drafting, in research, in arguments, etc. The rules should also not only address mandating certificates/declaration but also how AI should and should not be used in adjudication by the judges. This comes while considering the Punjab & Haryana High Court judge who used ChatGPT to take help during adjudication (Jaswinder Singh v. State of Punjab). The American Bar Association is one of the first bar associations that issued the “Ethics and Regulations of AI for Lawyers” opinion. They act as model rules for lawyers in the domain of use of Artificial Intelligence. In the similar manner India has regulate the field of law in terms of AI soon.