Appeals court flags possible sanctions over AI-made fake citations

In short: A US appeals court said sanctions may be appropriate after lawyers filed an appeal that appeared to include fake quotes and citations, possibly created with generative AI.

What happened

A man named Nikko D’Ambrosio sued more than two dozen women, plus Meta, after a critical post about him appeared in a Chicago Facebook group called “Are We Dating the Same Guy.” The post included a screenshot of a text message and led to a long comment thread where women shared opinions and criticism.

A federal district court had already dismissed the case “with prejudice,” meaning it was closed for good and could not be fixed by rewriting the complaint. D’Ambrosio appealed anyway, working with a firm called MarcTrent.AI, which has publicly said it uses AI to help draft legal documents.

On Friday, a three-judge panel on the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit said the appeal looked “frivolous” and noted “mistakes and fictitious quotations” that “bear the hallmarks of the misuse of generative artificial intelligence.” Generative AI is the kind of tool that can write text on request, like an autocomplete system that produces full paragraphs, but it can also make things up.

The court said fake quotations and errors that a lawyer could catch with basic checking are unacceptable. The judges gave the lawyers until June 16 to ask for a hearing or file statements about whether sanctions should be imposed.

Why it matters

Courts rely on lawyers to cite real cases and real quotes, similar to how a teacher expects students to use real sources in a report. This ruling is another warning that if lawyers use AI tools, they still must double-check everything before filing documents, or they could face fines and other penalties.

Source: Arstechnica