Attorney Faces Backlash for Relying on ChatGPT

A New York attorney was criticized for conducting legal research on ChatGPT for a case against a Colombian airline.

Robert Mata retained Steven Schwartz of the New York law firm Levidow, Levidow & Oberman to pursue an injury claim against Avianca Airlines.

Mata claims he was injured by a serving cart during his flight with the airline in 2019, per a CNN Business report from May 28.

Nevertheless, after a judge discovered inconsistencies and factual errors in the case documentation, Schwartz admitted on May 24 to using ChatGPT for legal research, per an affidavit.

He asserts that this was his first time using ChatGPT for legal research and that he “was unaware of the possibility that its content could be false.”

In a court filing dated April 5, the judge presiding over the case claimed:

“Six of the submitted cases appear to be bogus judicial decisions with bogus quotes and bogus internal citations.”

Certain instances cited in the submissions did not exist and that a docket number on a filing was confused with another filing.

Schwartz stated that he regrets having trusted the chatbot without conducting his investigation.

According to the affidavit:

“[Schwartz] Greatly regrets having utilized generative artificial intelligence to supplement the legal research performed herein and will never do so in the future without absolute verification of its authenticity.”

There has been an ongoing debate regarding how ChatGPT can be integrated into workforces in recent years.

However, reports indicate that ChatGPT’s intelligence is rapidly increasing.

However, developers are skeptical that it can potentially replace humans entirely.

Syed Ghazanfer, a blockchain developer, stated that while he favors ChatGPT, he doubts it has the communication skills to replace human workers fully.

“For it to replace you, you must communicate requirements that cannot be expressed in native English. We invented programming languages for this reason,” he said.