Lawyers in South Africa used ChatGPT to find legal precedents for a defamation case, but the AI generated fictitious case citations that led to a two-month court delay and a punitive costs order against their client.
In March 2023, lawyers representing Michelle Parker in a defamation case against a body corporate in Parkwood, Johannesburg used ChatGPT to research legal precedents. When the opposing counsel argued that a body corporate cannot be sued for defamation, Parker's lawyer Jurie Hayes claimed there were earlier judgments addressing this question. Magistrate Arvin Chaitram postponed the case to late May 2023 to allow both parties to source the suggested authorities. Parker's attorney Chantal Rodrigues of Rodrigues Blignaut Attorneys used ChatGPT as part of their research and provided a list of case names with citations to the opposing counsel. However, when the opposing team led by Max Rossle spent 15 hours over four days trying to locate these judgments, they discovered the case names were real but the citations referred to different cases entirely, and none related to defamation suits between body corporates and individuals. The Johannesburg Bar's librarians confirmed they could not find the judgments and suspected ChatGPT had generated them. In court, it was revealed that the names, citations, facts, and decisions were all fictitious. The magistrate found the attorneys were 'overzealous and careless' but had not intentionally misled the court, resulting in a punitive costs order against Parker rather than sanctions against the lawyers.
Domain classification, causal taxonomy, severity scores, and national security assessments were LLM-classified and may contain errors.
AI systems that inadvertently generate or spread incorrect or deceptive information, which can lead to inaccurate beliefs in users and undermine their autonomy. Humans that make decisions based on false beliefs can experience physical, emotional or material harms
AI system
Due to a decision or action made by an AI system
Unintentional
Due to an unexpected outcome from pursuing a goal
Post-deployment
Occurring after the AI model has been trained and deployed